Skip to content

Biography

1839-1899

Alfred Sisley was born in Paris of English parents. His father sent him to London for a business career, but he soon returned to Paris determined to be an artist. He studied in Gleyre's studio where he met Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir, who influenced his developing ideas about painting.

Sisley exhibited in four of the seven Impressionist Exhibitions. By 1880, his work developed its own particular vocabulary in a series of landscapes that demonstrate the lyricism of the effects of light and capturing the moment. Sisley, like Monet, remained most faithful to the original Impressionist ideas, applied throughout his career to urban landscape and garden subjects.

Although he visited England and painted there, Sisley was deeply attached to the bucolic charm of the French countryside, its meadows and rivers.