Sisley, Alfred (1839–1899)

French Impressionist painter, born in Paris of English parents. Lyrical and harmonious, his landscapes are distinctive for their lightness of touch and subtlety of tone. Among his works are The Square at Argenteuil (1872) and The Canal (1872) (both in the Louvre, Paris).

His father was a wealthy English businessman in Paris. Sisley was sent to England at the age of 18, destined for a commercial career, but he was afterwards allowed to study art, and worked in the studio of Charles Gleyre, where he met Monet and Renoir. He devoted himself exclusively to landscape, exhibited at the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874, and is a close partner of Monet in atmospheric colour. Unlike most other Impressionists, Sisley developed his style slowly and surely, without obvious changes. He began virtually as a ‘Sunday painter’, but the loss of the family fortune compelled him to paint in earnest for a living.

Apart from two short stays in England, when he painted on the Thames, he lived and worked in the valley of the Seine and near Paris, settling finally in a small dwelling at Moret. The Floods at Port-Marly (Louvre, Paris) and Bridge at Sèvres (Tate Gallery, London) are among his better-known works.