http://www.wikigallery.

org/wiki/painting_254142/Pietro-Longhi/The-Perfume-Seller2#Next_Paintings
picturile lui

Pietro Longhi
Pietro Longhi

Self-portrait of Longhi

Birth name

Pietro Longhi

Born

November 5, 1701

Died

May 8, 1785 (aged 83)

Nationality

Italian

Clara the rhinoceros by Pietro Longhi,1751 (Ca' Rezzonico)

La lezione di danza (The Dancing Lesson), ca 1741, Venezia, Gallerie dell'Accademia

The Charlatan, 1757

The Ridotto in Venice, ca. 1750s

Pietro Longhi (1702 or November 5, 1701[1] May 8, 1785) was a Venetian painter of contemporary scenes of
life.

Biography[
Pietro Longhi was born in Venice in the parish of Saint Maria, first child of the silversmith Alessandro Falca and
his wife, Antonia. He adopted the Longhi last name when he began to paint. He was initially taught by the
Veronese painter Antonio Balestra, who then recommended the young painter to apprentice with
the Bolognese Giuseppe Maria Crespi,[2] who was highly regarded in his day for both religious and genre
painting and was influenced by the work of Dutch painters. Longhi returned to Venice before 1732. He was
married in 1732 to Caterina Maria Rizzi, by whom he had eleven children (only three of which reached the age
of maturity).
Among his early paintings are some altarpieces and religious themes. His first major documented work was an
altarpiece for the church of San Pellegrino in 1732. In 1734, he completed frescoes in the walls and ceiling of
the hall in Ca' Sagredo, representing the Death of the giants. In the late 1730s, he began to specialize in the
small-scale genre works that would lead him to be viewed in the future as the Venetian William Hogarth,
painting subjects and events of everyday life in Venice. Longhi's gallant interior scenes reflect the 18th
century's turn towards the private and the bourgeois, and were extremely popular.
Many of his paintings show Venetians at play, such as the depiction of the crowd of genteel citizens awkwardly
gawking at a freakish Indianrhinoceros (see image). This painting, on display at the National Gallery in London,
chronicles Clara the rhinoceros brought to Europe in 1741 by a Dutch sea captain and impresario from Leyden,
Douvemont van der Meer. This rhinoceros was exhibited in Venice in 1751. [3] There are two versions of this
painting, nearly identical except for the unmasked portraits of two men in Ca' Rezzonico version.[4] Ultimately,
there may be a punning joke to the painting, since the young man on the left holds aloft the sawed
off horn (metaphor for cuckoldry) of the animal. Perhaps this explains the difference between the
unchaperoned women.
Other paintings chronicle the daily activities such as the gambling parlors (Ridotti) that proliferated in the 18th
century.[5] Nearly half of the figures in his genre paintings are faceless, hidden behind Venetian Carnival masks.
[6]

In some, the insecure or naive posture and circumstance, the puppet-like delicacy of the persons, seem to

suggest a satirical perspective of the artists toward his subjects. That this puppet-like quality was an intentional
conceit on Longhi's part is attested by the skillful rendering of figures in his earlier history paintings and in his
drawings.[7] Longhi's manydrawings, typically in black chalk or pencil heightened with white chalk on colored
paper, were often done for their own sake, rather than as studies for paintings.
In the 1750s, Longhilike Crespi before himwas commissioned to paint seven canvases documenting the
seven Catholic sacraments. These are now in Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia along with his scenes from the
hunt (Caccia).

From 1763 Longhi was Director of the Academy of Drawing and Carving. From this period, he began to work
extensively with portraiture, and was actively assisted by his son, Alessandro. On 8 May 1785, following a short
illness, he died, possibly due to a heart attack.
A paraphrase of Bernard Berenson states that "Longhi painted for the Venetians passionate about painting,
their daily lives, in all dailiness, domesticity, and quotidian mundane-ness. In the scenes regarding the hairdo
and the apparel of the lady, we find the subject of gossip of the inopportune barber, chattering of the maid; in
the school of dance, the amiable sound of violins. It is not tragic ... but upholds a deep respect of customs, of
great refinement, with an omnipresent good humor distinguishes the paintings of the Longhi from those of
Hogarth, at times pitiless and loaded with omens of change".[citation needed]

Masks
In numerous paintings of the 1750s and 1760s, Longhi depicts the upper class as masked figures engaging in
various acts from gambling to flirting. For example, in the foreground of Longhis painting The Meeting of the
Procuratore and His Wife are a woman who is being greeted by a man that is presumed to be her husband.
The setting is of a type of gathering place usually for masked people to engage in private matters such as
romantic encounters.[8] The woman and her husband are not masked, but at the left a seated woman is
unmasking herself to address a masked man leaning over her shoulder. This act may suggest that the womans
Moretta mask, which lacks an opening for the mouth, requires her to unmask herself in order to speak; another
interpretation is that the woman is interested enough in the masked man to remove her mask in order to reveal
her true identity to him.[original research?]
In The Charlatan (1757; seen at right) the titular character is relegated to the background, where he stands on
top of a table surrounded by admiring women and a young boy. In the foreground, a masked woman seems to
fiddle with her fan and slyly look at a masked man who lifts part of her dress. There is a sense of duality as the
ordinary event of the man on the top of the table is contrasted with the reality of Venetian life represented by
the couple indulging themselves; this is similar to the duality of the mask used by his subjects to hide
physically, but to expose their unconscious desires.
Longhis portrayal of reality is also evident in his painting The Ridotto in Venice (ca. 1750s; seen at right) which
depicts one of the many gambling halls in Venice. The scene is a crowd of figures, masked and unmasked.
There is no one focal point in this work; many figures are playing cards and engaging in mysterious
conversation. The center of the painting depicts a now familiar scene of a masked couple consisting of a shy
woman and an aggressive man who lifts her dress. Repeating the figures of the flirtatious couple, Longhi
displays the Ridotto as a place where the social elitewho would not exhibit such behavior in public nor
unmaskedwould abandon all inhibitions and pursue their actual desires.

Works

San Pellegrino sentenced to execution, 17301732, oil on canvas, 400x340, parish church of San
Pellegrino

Adoration of the Magi, 17301732, oil on canvas, 190x150, Venice, Scuola di San Giovanni
Evangelista

Fall of the giants, frescoes, Venice, Ca 'Sagredo, 1734,

Shepherd sitting, 1740, oil on canvas, 61x48, Bassano, Museo Civico

Pastorello standing, 1740, oil on canvas, 61x48, Bassano, Museo Civico

Shepherdess with flower, 1740, oil on canvas, 61x48, Bassano, Museo Civico

Shepherdess with cock, 1740, oil on canvas, 61x48, Bassano, Museo Civico

Pastorello standing, 1740, oil on canvas, 61x45, Rovigo, Museo del Seminario

The spinner, 1740, oil on canvas, 61x50, Venice, Ca 'Rezzonico

The Washerwomen, 1740, oil on panel, 61x50, Venice, Ca 'Rezzonico

The happy couple, 1740, oil on canvas, 61x50, Venice, Ca 'Rezzonico

The polenta, 1740, oil on canvas, 61x50, Venice, Ca 'Rezzonico

Drinkers, 17401745, oil on canvas, 61x48, Milan, Galleria d'Arte Moderna

The concert, 1741, oil on canvas, 60x48, Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia

The dance class, about 1741, oil on canvas, 60x49, Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia

The tailor, c. 1741, oil on canvas, 60x49, Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia

The toilet, ca 1741, oil on canvas, 60x49, Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia

The presentation, about 1741, oil on canvas, 64x53, Paris, Louvre

The visit to the library, about 1741, oil on canvas, 59x44, Worcester Art Museum

Frescoes, 1744, Venice, Church of San Pantalon

The awakening of the knight, 1744, oil on canvas, 49x60, Windsor, royal collections

The blindman's buff, 1744, oil on canvas, 48x58, Windsor, royal collections

Fainting, 1744, oil on canvas, 49x61, Washington, National Gallery

The game of the pan, 1744, oil on canvas, 49x61, Washington, National Gallery

The visit to the lady, 1746, oil on canvas, 61x49, New York, Metropolitan Museum

Meeting of the Prosecutor and his wife, 1746, oil on canvas, 61x49, New York, Metropolitan Museum

The visit to the Lord, 1746, oil on canvas, 61x49, New York, New York, Metropolitan Museum

The milliner, 1746, oil on canvas, 61x49, New York, Metropolitan Museum

Family group, 1746, oil on canvas, 61x49, London, National Gallery

The visit of the Prosecutor, c.1750, oil on canvas, 61x49, London, National Gallery

The Dentist, c.1750, oil on canvas, 50x62, Milan, Brera

The laundresses, c. 1750, oil on canvas, 61x50, Castle Zoppola, Pordenone

The polenta, c.1750, oil on canvas, 60x50, Castle Zoppola, Pordenone

The spinner, c.1750, oil on canvas, 61x50, Castle Zoppola, Pordenone

Drunks, c.1750, oil on canvas, 61x50, Castle Zoppola, Pordenone

The spinner, c.1750, oil on canvas, 60x49, Venice, Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia

The peasant woman asleep, c.1750, oil on canvas, 61x50, Venice, Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia

The seller of fritole, c.1750, oil on canvas, 62x51, Venice, Ca 'Rezzonico

The rhino, 1751, oil on canvas, 62x50, Venice, Ca 'Rezzonico

The rhino, c. 1751, oil on canvas, 60x57, London, National Gallery

The soothsayer, 1752, oil on canvas, 62x50, Venice, Ca 'Rezzonico

The school work, 1752, oil on canvas, 62x50, Venice, Ca 'Rezzonico

Geography lesson, 1752, oil on canvas, 61x49, Venice, Fondazione Querini Stampalia.

The pharmacist, 1752, oil on canvas, 60x48, Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia

The tickle, 1755, oil on canvas, 61x48, Madrid, Thyssen Collection

Baptism, 1755, oil on canvas, 60x49, Venice, Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia

The charlatan, 1757, oil on canvas, 62x50, Venice, Ca 'Rezzonico

Alchemists, 1757, oil on canvas, 61x50, Venice, Ca 'Rezzonico

The Card Players, 1760, oil on canvas, 60x47, Milan, Galleria d'Arte Moderna

The Music Lesson, 1760, oil on copper, 45x58, Baltimore, Walters Art Museum

Philosopher Pythagoras, 1762, oil on canvas, 130x91, Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia

The cabin of the lion, 1762, oil on canvas, 61x50, Venice, Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia

Francesco Guardi, 1764, oil on canvas, 132x100, Venice, Ca 'Rezzonico

The arrival of the Lord, c.1770, oil on canvas, 62x50, Venice, Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia

The family Michiel, 1780, oil on canvas, 49x61, Venice, Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Longhi

Pietro Longhi, original name Pietro Falca

(born 1702, Venicedied May 8, 1785, Venice), painter

of the Rococo period known for his small scenes of Venetian social and domestic life.
He was the son of a silversmith, Alessandro Falca, in whose workshop he received his first training.
Later he worked under the Veronese historical painter Antonio Balestra, but his one important work
of this sort, the monumental ceiling of the Fall of the Giants (completed 1734) for the Palazzo
Sagredo, was an artistic and critical failure. It is likely that because of this he left Venice for a time
and studied at Bologna under the genre painter Giuseppe Maria Crespi.

After his return to Venice he devoted himself to painting everyday scenes from the life of the
citysupper class and bourgeoisie, somewhat in the manner of Nicolas Lancret but in a more ironic
vein. He was also undoubtedly influenced by Dutch genre painting, of which there was at least one
important collection in Venice at that date. Longhis genre pictures provide a varied and detailed
documentation of contemporary Venetian life and events (e.g., The Dancing Master and Exhibition
of a Rhinoceros at Venice. Popular for their charm and seeming naivete, his paintings have a
Rococo sense of the intimate and manifest the interest in social observation characteristic of the
Enlightenment. His works, like those ofAntoine Watteau, were based on carefully observed figure
drawings, a large number of which survive. He also painted landscapes and occasional portraits.
Many of his paintings were engraved. He was elected to the Venetian Academy at its foundation in
1756.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/347502/Pietro-Longhi

ietro Falca, known as Pietro Longhi, was the main painter of everyday life scenes in 18th-century Venice. His
typical small interior scenes record life in Venice, without biting satire or pretentiousness though perhaps with a
trace of gentle irony. Longhi had been born in Venice, the son of a goldsmith, and trained first by the history painter,
Antonio Balestra (1666-1740).

He was subsequently in Bologna, as a pupil of Guiseppe Maria Crespi, who was well known for his studies of
contemporary life, influenced by the work of Dutchpainters. Longhi returned to Venice before 1732, the year of his
marriage, and was active for a period as a history painter. The first dated example of his typical small interior
scenes is from 1741.

Related paintings
A Fortune Teller at Venice
Pietro Longhi
about 1756

A Lady receiving a Cavalier

Pietro Longhi
1745-55

A Nobleman kissing a Lady's Hand

Pietro Longhi
about 1746

An Interior with Three Women and a Seated Man

Pietro Longhi
probably 1750-5

Exhibition of a Rhinoceros at Venice

Pietro Longhi
probably 1751

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/pietro-longhi

Alfred Sisley

Alfred Sisley

Alfred Sisley (n. 30 octombrie 1839 d. 29 ianuarie 1899) a fost un pictor impresionist englez care a
trit i a pictat n Frana.
Sisley s-a nscut n Paris, prinii si fiind englezi William Sisley i Felicia Sell. La nceputul anilor 1860 a
studiat n atelierul lui Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre, unde i-a ntalnit pe Frederic Bazille, Claude Monet i
pe Pierre-Auguste Renoir. mpreuna au pictat n aer liber, pentru a captura ct mai real efectele pasagere
ale razelor solare. Abordarea inovativ la acel moment a generat picturi mai colorate dect cele pe care
erau oamenii obinuii s vad. Prefer s picteze suprafeele apei, vederea caleidoscopic a apei. Prin
urmare Sisley i prietenii si au avut la nceput cteva oportuniti de a- i vinde tablourile sau de a le
expune, dei spre deosebire de civa colegi de-ai si care aveau greut i financiare el primea o aloca ie
de la tatl su.
Lucrrile lui Sisley din studenie s-au pierdut, cea mai timpurie lucrare a sa se crede, c a fost pictat n
jurul anului 1864. La sfritul anilor 1860, el a nceput o rela ie cu Eugenie Lescouezec, cu care a avut 2
copii. Relaia acestora a continuat timp de 30 ani, sfrindu-se cu moartea acesteia, cu cteva luni
nainte de moartea lui n 1899.
Sisley a murit n Moret-sur-Loing la vrsta de 59 de ani.

Galerie

Bulevard cu mesteceni lng La Celle-Saint-Cloud, 1865

Pod la Villeneuve-la-Garenne1872

Pod la Hampton Court, 1874

Molesey Weir - Diminea, 1874

Regatta la Hampton Court, 1874

Regatta la Molesey, 1874

Pajite, 1875

Inundaie la Port-Marly, 1876.Muse d'Orsay

Langland.

http://www.alfredsisley.org/-toate picturile lui

http://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sisley

Alfred Sisley
Alfred Sisley

Alfred Sisley in 1882

Born

30 October 1839
Paris, France

Died

29 January 1899 (aged 59)

Moret-sur-Loing, France

Nationality

British

Field

Painting

Training

Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre

Movement

Impressionism

Alfred Sisley (30 October 1839 29 January 1899) was an Impressionist landscape painter who was
born and spent most of his life in France, but retained British citizenship. He was the most consistent of
the Impressionists in his dedication to painting landscape en plein air (i.e., outdoors). He never deviated
into figure painting and, unlike Renoir and Pissarro, never found that Impressionism did not fulfill his
artistic needs.
Among his important works are a series of paintings of the River Thames, mostly around Hampton,
executed in 1874, and landscapes depicting places in or near Moret-sur-Loing.

Biography

Sisley was born on 30 October 1839 in Paris to affluent British parents. His father, William Sisley, was in
the silk business, and his mother Felicia Sell was a cultivated music connoisseur.
In 1857 at the age of 18, Sisley was sent to London to study for a career in business, but he abandoned it
after four years and returned to Paris in 1861. From 1862, he studied at the Paris cole des BeauxArts within the atelier of Swiss artist Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre, where he became acquainted
with Frdric Bazille, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Together they would paint
landscapes en plein air rather than in the studio, in order to realistically capture the transient effects of
sunlight. This approach, innovative at the time, resulted in paintings more colorful and more broadly
painted than the public was accustomed to seeing. Consequently, Sisley and his friends initially had few
opportunities to exhibit or sell their work. Their works were usually rejected by the jury of the most
important art exhibition in France, the annual Salon. During the 1860s, though, Sisley was in a better
financial position than some of his fellow artists, as he received an allowance from his father.
In 1866, Sisley began a relationship with Eugnie Lesouezec (18341898; also known as Marie
Lescouezec), a Breton living in Paris. The couple produced two children: son Pierre (born 1867) and
daughter Jeanne (1869).[1] At the time, Sisley lived not far from Avenue de Clichy and the Caf Guerbois,
the gathering-place of many Parisian painters.
In 1868, his paintings were accepted at the Salon, but the exhibition did not bring him financial or critical
success; nor did subsequent exhibitions.

Molesey Weir Morning, one of the paintings executed by Sisley on his visit to Britain in 1874

In 1870 the Franco-Prussian War began, and as a result Sisley's father's business failed and the painter's
sole means of support became the sale of his works. For the remainder of his life he would live in poverty,
as his paintings did not rise significantly in monetary value until after his death. [2]Occasionally, however,
Sisley would be backed by patrons; and this allowed him, among other things, to make a few brief trips to
Britain.
The first of these occurred in 1874 after the first independent Impressionist exhibition. The result of a few
months spent near London was a series of nearly twenty paintings of the Upper Thames near Molesey,
which was later described by art historian Kenneth Clark as "a perfect moment of Impressionism."
Until 1880, Sisley lived and worked in the country west of Paris; then he and his family moved to a small
village near Moret-sur-Loing, close to theforest of Fontainebleau, where the painters of the Barbizon
school had worked earlier in the century. Here, as art historian Anne Poulet has said, "the gentle
landscapes with their constantly changing atmosphere were perfectly attuned to his talents. Unlike Monet,
he never sought the drama of the rampaging ocean or the brilliantly colored scenery of the Cte d'Azur."[3]
In 1881 Sisley made a second brief voyage to Britain.
In 1897 Sisley and his partner visited Britain again, and were finally married in Cardiff Register Office on 5
August.[4] They stayed at Penarth, where Sisley painted at least six oils of the sea and the cliffs. In mid-

August they moved to the Osborne Hotel at Langland Bay on the Gower Peninsula, where he produced at
least eleven oil paintings in and around Langland Bay and Rotherslade Bay (then called Lady's Cove).
They returned to France in October. This was Sisley's last voyage to his ancestral homeland.
The National Museum Cardiff possesses two of his oil paintings of Penarth and Langland.
The following year Sisley applied for French citizenship, but was refused. A second application was made
and supported by a police report, but illness intervened, [5] and Sisley remained British till his death.
The painter died on 29 January 1899 of throat cancer in Moret-sur-Loing at the age of 59, a few months
after the death of his wife.

Work

Lane Near a Small Town (c. 1864), one of the earliest extant paintings by Sisley

Sisley's student works are lost. His earliest known work, Lane near a Small Town, is believed to have
been painted around 1864. His first landscape paintings are sombre, coloured with dark browns, greens,
and pale blues. They were often executed at Marly and Saint-Cloud. Little is known about Sisley's
relationship with the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and John Constable, which he may have seen in
London, but some have suggested that these artists may have influenced his development as an
Impressionist painter,[6] as may have Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
Among the Impressionists Sisley has been overshadowed by Monet, although his work most resembles
that of Camille Pissarro. Described by art historian Robert Rosenblum as having "almost a generic
character, an impersonal textbook idea of a perfect Impressionist painting", [7] his work strongly invokes
atmosphere, and his skies are always impressive. He concentrated on landscape more consistently than
any other Impressionist painter.
Among Sisley's best-known works are Street in Moret and Sand Heaps, both owned by the Art Institute of
Chicago, and The Bridge at Moret-sur-Loing, shown at Muse d'Orsay, Paris. Alle des peupliers de
Moret (The Lane of Poplars at Moret) has been stolen three times from the Muse des BeauxArts in Nice - once in 1978 when on loan in Marseilles (recovered a few days later in the city's sewers),
again in 1998 (when the museum's curator was convicted of the theft and jailed for five years with two
accomplices) and finally in August 2007 (on 4 June 2008 French police recovered it and three other
stolen paintings from a van in Marseilles).[8]
In 1952 Paul Georges sold a painting in New York City putatively by Alfred Sisley (for $2000) to help
neighbor Mme. Mac Guffie, a widow from France. Her husband was a dentist from Scotland who traded
paintings from his customers who were Impressionist painters.
An amazingly large number of fake Sisleys have been discovered. Sisley produced some 900 oil
paintings, some 100 pastels and many other drawings, although he only lived to be 59 years old. [9]

Selected works

The Terrace at Saint-Germain, Spring, 1875. The Walters Art Museum

Flood at Port-Marly, 1876. Muse d'Orsay

Lane near a Small Town (c. 1864)

Avenue of Chestnut Trees near La Celle-Saint-Cloud (c. 1865)

Village Street in Marlotte (1866)

Avenue of Chestnut Trees near La Celle-Saint-Cloud (1867)

Still Life with Heron (1867)

The Seine at St. Mammes (186769)

View of Montmartre from the cite des Fleurs (1869)

Early Snow at Louveciennes (c. 187172)

Boulevard Heloise, Argenteuil (1872)

Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne (1872)

Ferry to the Ile-de-la-Loge - Flood (1872)

Footbridge at Argenteuil (1872)

La Grande-Rue, Argenteuil (c. 1872)

Square in Argenteuil (Rue de la Chaussee) (1872)

Chemin de la Machine Louveciennes (1873)

Factory in the Flood, Bougival (1873)

Rue de la Princesse, Louveciennes (1873)

Sentier de la Mi-cote, Louveciennes (1873)

Among the Vines Louveciennes (1874)

Bridge at Hampton Court (1874)

The Lesson (1874)

Molesey Weir - Morning (1874)

Regatta at Hampton Court (1874)

Regatta at Molesey (1874)

Snow on the Road Louveciennes (1874)

Under the Bridge at Hampton Court (1874)

Street in Louveciennes (Rue de la Princesse) (1875)

The Terrace at Saint-Germain, Spring (1875)

"The Terrace at Saint-Germain, Spring" (1875)

Small Meadows in Spring (c. 1881)

Storr Rock, Lady's Cove, le soir (1897)

On the cliffs, Langland Bay (1897)

Gallery

Avenue of Chestnut Trees near La Celle-Saint-Cloud, 1865

Early Snow at Louveciennes, c. 1871-1872

Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne 1872

Footbridge at Argenteuil, 1872

Chemin de la Machine Louveciennes, 1873

Sentier de la Mi-cote, Louveciennes, 1873

Among the Vines Louveciennes, 1874

Bridge at Hampton Court, 1874

Molesey Weir - Morning, 1874

Regatta at Hampton Court, 1874

Regatta at Molesey, 1874

Snow on the Road Louveciennes, 1874

Under the Bridge at Hampton Court, 1874

Meadow, 1875

Flood at Port-Marly, 1876.Muse d'Orsay

Small Meadows in Spring, c. 1881

View of Saint-Mamms, (circa 1880). The Walters Art Museum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sisley

The landscape paintings of Alfred Sisley occupy an inviolable position in the

history of early Impressionism. His depictions of the Thames atHampton
Court, the Seine in flood, the snow bound suburbs of Paris are indispensable
to an account of Impressionist landscape painting in the 1870s. Indeed, they
are so fundamentally representative of our notion of what constitutes 'pure'
Impressionism, that the re-evaluation of the movement in recent years has
often left Sisley stranded outside it. This has greatly added to the comparative
neglect of his work. He is famous but not known, admired but little studied.
Many accounts of Impressionism treat him perfunctorily; assessments run on
the comfortable premise that he was a marvellous painter for two or three
years but became a victim of his style and collapsed into an irreversible
decline. ... While there can be little doubt that the best paintings were made in
the 1870s, there are vigorous and beautiful works from the years that
followed.
Other reasons exist for Sisley's shadowy reputation. Most obviously, his
output appears less substantial and less clearly directed than that of his
associates - Monet, Renoir and Pissarro. Their later evolutions, especially
those of Monet and Renoir, drew Impressionism into the earlytwentieth
century. Sisley's death at the very end of the nineteenth assumes a symbolic
resonance. It signals the dissolution of the kind of Impressionism to which he
had devoted his working life. His relatively early death put an end to the
unmistakable signs of renewal in his painting of the 1890s: a late flowering,
withered almost before it had begun.
Compared with that of his colleagues, Sisley's development was neither
complex nor dramatic. The personality his work exudes is reticent and sober,
marked, as the American painter Marsden Hartley wrote, by a 'solemn
severity'. The influences digested in his early years, both English and French,
served their purpose throughout his life. There are, of course, recognizable
phases within his work, for Sisley was a highly conscious artist. Yet once the
excitement of the Impressionist moment was over, his pace was leisurely and
his evolution unforced. It is tempting to attribute this quiet self-effacement to
his English origins, through which an innate insularity was transferred to the

Ile de France. Several of his forebears, for example, were conspicuous for a
plucky adventurousness followed by bourgeois consolidation. The pattern of
Sisley's evolution is much the same.
Recent Impressionist studies have been devoted, for the most part, to an
investigation of subject matter and iconography - Sisley's work does not
readily submit itself to such analysis. There is almost no overt social or
political content in his painting, no informative celebration of contemporary
people, no agrarian comment or escapist Mediterranean allure. It is true that
he was not attracted to aspects of urban life, as found in Renoir, nor to the
ideological impulses that inform, for example, much of Pissarro's work. For
most of his life Sisley was content to depict the traditional activities of
countryside and rural waterways as they impinged on the landscape. In the
1870s, working in all the places whose names recur in the early history of
Impressionism - Bougival, Argenteuil, Marty, Louveciennes - Sisley resolutely
turned his back on their social life. He concentrated instead on undisturbed or
only distantly animated aspects of his surroundings. This has led to an
underestimation of those elements of the everyday scene which do, in fact,
appear intermittently throughout his painting. There are many moments of
private leisure - there are trains, factory chimneys, pleasure boats and barges,
a forge, a flood rescue, quayside activities; there are the flags and crowds of
regattas on the Thames and of Paris effete at the Point du Jour. None of these
should be omitted from an account of Sisley's role within Impressionism
viewed in its social context.
No substantial biography of Sisley has yet been written. His life is not well
documented and this has furthered his neglect. Although he wrote many
letters, few are personally revealing or of exceptional interest. There are no
journals or autobiographical writings and he died before celebrity might have
sent interviewers and photographers to his door. At the same time, the change
in his character from high spirits and sociability to a seemingly misanthropic
and suspicious demeanour accounts for the virtual disappearance of his name
from the memoirs and letters of several of his early friends. As a result of
this profil perdu, the few facts about Sisley's life that have long been taken for
granted have not been thoroughly examined. Since the publication in 1959 of
Francois Daulte's catalogue raisonne, almost no research has investigated
Sisley's life - misstatements and misconceptions abound. Several of these
have been corrected...and use has been made of unpublished letters and
archival documents. These modify or illuminate at many points the
biographical outline of Sisley and set his work in a more palpable context.
New material has shaped the narrative and deepened that sense of Sisley as
resourceful, proud and solitary. In a passage on the landscapes of Ruisdael,
written in 1875, Eugene Fromentin wrote of the Dutch painter as
a dreamer, one of those men of whom many exist in our own day but who
were rare in Ruisdael's time - one of those lonely wanderers who flee from the
town, frequent the outskirts, who love the country without exaggeration and

describe it without phrases, who are made uneasy by distant horizons but are
charmed by open country, moved by a shadow and enchanted by a shaft of
sunlight.
He goes on to suggest the sombre reasonableness of Ruisdael's melancholy,
the product neither of self-indulgent immaturity nor of the fretful self pity of old
age. No one familiar with Sisley's painting or his character can fail to be
reminded of them by Fromentin's words. They were written in the year when
Sisley produced some of his finest paintings, and at the start of one of the
most discouraging periods of his life. He was at the height of his powers,
superbly endowed with gifts that place his achievements on a level with those
of Renoir, Monet and Pissarro. In particular, he faultlessly conveys those
startling moments of perception in which a scene is removed from its
surroundings, however commonplace, and steeped in an undefinable emotion
- the Marly aqueduct, the flooded inn by the Seine, a passer by in the snow, a
girl swinging in an orchard, a wave breaking over a rock on the shore. He has
the power of transcribing such scenes as though be had been searching for
them all along, and yet he reveals them with an air of diffidence that disarms
while it captivates. It is at such moments that Sisley enlarges our perception of
Impressionist painting and joins the ranks of the great European landscapists.
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