Alfred Sisley:His Works

Flood at Port Marly

Like most of the Impressionists, Sisley submitted work to the Salon in the 1860s. His success was as uneven as his colleagues; he was accepted in 1866, 1868 and 1870 while being rejected in 1867 and 1869. He was, from the start, among the core group of the Impressionists, took part in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 and participated in three others. His painting of these years was at the pure center of the movement; his Flood at Port-Marly of 1876, one of six paintings he made of the subject, is on a par with the best works being made by any of the group at that time.

In the 1870s Sisley produced a remarkable series of landscapes of Argenteuil, where he was living, one of which, The Bridge at Argenteuil,1872; was bought by Manet. Towards the end of the decade Monet was beginning to have a considerable influence on him, and a series of landscape paintings of the area around Paris, including Marly, Bougival and Louveciennes (Floods at Port-Marly, Musée d'Orsay, 1876), shows the way in which his dominent and evident lyricism still respects the demands of the subject-matter. From his early admiration for Corot he retained a passionate interest in the sky, which nearly always dominates his paintings. In this regard, the model of Constable was an important precedent, particularly the brilliant little cloud studies the English artist had done directly from nature. Sisley's compositions often devote half or more of a canvas to the sky.

Another feature that dominates his paintings is the effects of snow -- the two interests often combining to createa strangely dramatic effect (Snow at Véneux; Musée d'Orsay, 1880).Unlike many of his colleagues who, from the1880s began questioning some of the original aspects of Impressionism, Sisley continued to remain close to the original aesthetic, painting his visual sensations and the transient moods of nature, making no radical changes of direction. Pissarro, was once asked by Henri Matisse, "What is an Impressionist?" His response was, "a painter who never paints the same picture twice over; all his pictures are different." When Matisse asked him for an example, Pissarro named Sisley. Sisley's artistic sensibility was nurtured by his attachment to place, in particular to the villages west and south-east of Paris which he came to know so well by living and working in them.

Back................Biography