Sisley, Alfred

(1839-1899)

   painter

   Born in Paris to English parents, Alfred Sisley studied there in the studio of the Swiss painter Charles Gleyre and became a friend of Frédéric bazille, claude monet, and pierre-auguste renoir. Rejecting the academic style, rent to paint with them at Chailly, in the forest of Fontainebleau. His early works were influenced by the realism of gustave courbet and the style of camille corot and Charles Daubigny. Refused several times by the Paris Salon, Sisley moved, thanks to Monet, closer to impressionism, to which he remained faithful in spite of the poverty that he suffered after 1870. He painted exclusively landscapes, which were done at Marly, Louveciennes, Bougival, and Moret, which became his home in 1879. He traveled to London (1879), where he became familiar with the works of Constable and Turner, and later went to Normandy (1894). Especially skillful at showing the effects of fog, rain, or snow, and the transparency of reflections and the fluidity of water, he used a refined palette with overtures of gray. Showing a poetic and discrete use of fleeting light, and a coming together of colors rather than a clearly set juxtaposition on canvas, his compositions have unity (Inondations à Port-Marly, 1878; La Neige à Louveciennes 1878). Sis-ley's genius and his works were recognized only after his death.