Alfred Sisley
English
1839-1899
The Impressionists were innovators. To put it simply, they were the first artists to paint pictures completely outside, from start to finish. The critics were at first cold to their efforts, and left them little opportunity to exhibit or sell work.
In order to understand this scenario, you must first imagine that you have never seen an Impressionist painting before. The public and critics were used to highly-polished, carefully-delineated paintings that were uniformly colored, usually in deep brownish and golden tones. In addition to this, they were almost always finished in the studio, wheras the Impressionists were exclusively plein air.
Like the other founders of the Impressionist movement, Alfred Sisley was concerned with capturing the ‘immediacy” and “impression” of a landscape scene, as well as capturing temporal outdoor effects. This approach, which utilized a primary palette, yielded high key paintings that were painted very broadly, often with short, choppy brush strokes. This “new painting style” (Impressionism) seemed at first “unfinished’ to many viewers.
Throughout Sisley’s career he grappled with the challenge of how to portray motion in his work, which gave rise to very original brushstrokes; The trees, sky (clouds) and waters suggest this “movement” in many of his paintings. Sisley was also a gifted colorist, though not surprisingly, he tended towards Tonalism in his mature work.
Alfred Sisley was a man who faced an unforeseeable loss of wealth soon after he was married and had started a family; he faced steady opposition from people in power; his paintings received constant criticism; he was in continual poverty after losing his wealth, and he witnessed the success of his peers(the other members of the Impressionists) while he remained overshadowed. If Sisley became bitter who could blame him? How many of us would just give up, and stop trying?
Yet, here is where we see Sisley at his best!
In lieu of the troubles he must have faced everyday, we do not see darkness, doom, or gloom in his paintings, but we see brilliant light, beautiful color combinations, and tranquility. This is where I see Sisley’s strength. Sisley favored quiet, pastoral scenes and ordinary rural views, instead of industrialized scenes, and chose to view the landscape as a place where man lives in harmony with it, not a place dominated by man.
Sisley and his family eventually moved away from the expenses of Paris and settled in a small village near Fontainebleau, where they spent the remainder of their days in quiet contentment.