Alfred Sisley

The life of Alfred Sisley,
scene by scene

1. 1862Paris

   A young man of twenty-two walks into the studio of the painter Charles Gleyre. There Alfred Sisley meets Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Frédéric Bazille. The four soon cared more about the countryside than the classroom, and they went off together to paint in the forests outside Paris.

   Getting there had taken a detour. His father, William Sisley, was an English merchant who imported luxury goods such as silk. In 1857 he sent his son to London to learn the trade. A few years later Alfred came back to Paris and chose painting instead.

2. 1874Hampton Court

   That spring Sisley hung his pictures in the first Impressionist exhibition, which he and his friends put on themselves. In summer he crossed to England and settled by the Thames at Hampton Court, near London. The trip was paid for by Jean-Baptiste Faure, a famous baritone at the Paris Opera and a keen collector.

   Sisley paid him back in paintings. By autumn he had painted the regatta, the bridge and the riverbanks again and again, and several of those canvases went to Faure.

3. 1875Paris

   On 24 March 1875 the Hôtel Drouot auction house was packed. At Renoir's suggestion, he, Monet, Berthe Morisot and Sisley had put seventy-three of their paintings up for sale together. As the pictures came up, part of the crowd laughed and jeered, and the bids stayed low.

   Sisley's canvases went for very little. Still, the four had tried to find buyers by knocking on the door together.

4. 1879Sèvres

   At his home in Sèvres, Sisley learns that the Salon jury has turned him down. He had broken the group's agreement not to send work to the Salon, so his pictures were also left out of that year's Impressionist exhibition. Renoir wrote to the publisher Georges Charpentier asking him to give Sisley a show of his own.

   The spring before, Sisley painted Allée of Chestnut Trees here. A path curves along the river under chestnuts dotted with pinkish blossom. A railing runs along the water on the left, and a carriage rolls down the middle of the road. Tree shadows lie across the pale violet path.

   Painted around this timeAllée of Chestnut Trees
5. 1894Rouen

   That summer a wealthy Rouen businessman, François Depeaux, invited Sisley to Normandy. Depeaux was a patron who kept buying his work. Sisley stayed at Depeaux's house at Le Mesnil-Esnard, near Rouen, and painted the meadows at Sahurs beside the Seine.

   Look at Sahurs Meadows in Morning Sun. On the right a field glows a pinkish gold. On the left a dark mass of trees throws shade. Tall, thin poplars stand along the horizon. The painting ended up in Depeaux's collection.

   Painted around this timeSahurs Meadows in Morning Sun
6. 1897Cardiff

   On 5 August 1897, at the register office in Cardiff, Wales, Sisley, then fifty-seven, married Eugénie. They had lived together for about thirty years. The marriage made their two children legally his. Because Sisley was still a British subject, he could marry in Britain.

   The couple spent that summer at Penarth, then went on to Langland Bay on the Gower coast, where he painted the rocks by the sea. Earlier that year, in February, a large show of his work had opened at the Georges Petit gallery in Paris.

7. 1899Moret-sur-Loing

   In October 1898 Eugénie died at Moret-sur-Loing. Sisley was already ill with cancer of the throat. That year he applied for French citizenship, but the process was never completed.

   In January 1899, close to death, he sent for Monet and asked him to look after his children. He died on 29 January, aged fifty-nine. Later that year Monet and Depeaux helped organize an auction of his paintings to support the two children. His blossoming chestnuts and his Normandy meadow now hang in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.