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ALFRED SISLEY

FRENCH

BiographyAlfred Sisley was born on 30 October 1839 in Paris, of English parents. While living in London from 1857 to 1859, instead of learning his father's business he visited museums to study the works of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable. Returning to Paris in 1860 to become a pupil of the Swiss painter Charles Gabriel Gleyre, Sisley met Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Frederic Bazille. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1866 as the pupil of Camille Corot, but in 1867 his work was rejected. In the 1870s he was influenced by the ideas of Impressionism and exhibited with the Impressionists in 1874, 1876, 1877, 1882. Sisley remained faithful to the ideals of "plein-air" landscape painting, rarely depicting the city life portrayed by Monet, Renoir and Camille Pissarro. He left Paris in the 1880s, living in Veneux-Nadon, Les Sablons and Moret-sur-Loing and painting the modest surrounding countryside. Naturally diffident, Sisley did not promote himself in the way that some of his fellow Impressionists did and it was only towards the end of his life, when he was suffering from throat cancer, that he was recognized. He died on 29 January 1899 at Moret-sur-Loing.

--National Gallery of Art

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