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Alfred Sisley was born in Paris in 1839 into a wealthy English family. In 1857, at the age of eighteen, he was sent to London to study commerce with a view to entering the family business, but after four years he returned to Paris and decided to devote himself entirely to painting. In 1863, with the support of his family, he entered the studio of Charles Gleyre where he met and became lifelong friends of Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Frédéric Bazille. The trio of artists made regular excursions out into the countryside to paint ‘en plein air’ and explore new techniques of capturing light and colour. Sisley's first recorded landscape dates from around 1864, yet his financially comfortable circumstances may account for the fact that there are only eighteen known paintings of his pre-dating 1871.
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In 1870 Sisley’s lifestyle changed abruptly, with the onset of the Franco-Prussian War his father’s business failed and the family faced financial ruin. He was then compelled to turn to painting as a means of supporting himself and from this time forward his correspondence to friends and patrons is dominated by pleas for financial aid and support.
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Alfred Sisley spent most of his life in northern France, in 1878 he moved from Louveciennes and the Île de France region to Moret-sur-Loing close to the Forest of Fontainebleau, where he settled permanently. Enchanted by his surroundings Sisley spent the rest of his life painting the countryside around Moret, concentrating on producing gentle, bucolic scenes centred on the banks of the river Loing. Water became an important part of his work giving his paintings a joyous vibrancy and purity of tone.
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One of the most devoted Impressionists Sisley exhibited in four of the Impressionist exhibitions in 1874, 1876, 1877 and 1882 and remained faithful to their principles and theories throughout his career. The only Impressionist to paint almost exclusively landscape, Sisley rarely painted figure subjects; his chief interest was in trying to represent the mood and atmosphere of nature, producing studies of the changes in colour and form which different seasons brought to a particular scene. His lyrical landscapes are distinguished by impressive skies, rippling water and verdant countryside.
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Sisley died in poverty at the age of 59. Despite a successful one-man show given by the dealer Durand-Ruel in 1883, his paintings never found many buyers during his lifetime, and in 1897, at a large retrospective exhibition at the Georges Petit Gallery, not one painting was sold. Today he is considered to be one of the most consistent and talented of the Impressionists, a major exhibition celebrating his work toured Europe and the United States in 1992 and his work can be seen in museums in Paris, New York, Washington, Tokyo and London.
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