Artists

Alfred Sisley

English SIZ-lee; French sees-LAY

Citation Formats

General Reference

Arts and Music Atlas. "Alfred Sisley." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://arts.interactiveatlas.org/artists/alfred-sisley.

APA Style

Arts and Music Atlas. (n.d.). Alfred Sisley. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://arts.interactiveatlas.org/artists/alfred-sisley

BibTeX

@misc{artsandmusicatlas-alfred-sisley,
  author = {Arts and Music Atlas},
  title = {Alfred Sisley},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://arts.interactiveatlas.org/artists/alfred-sisley},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Alfred Sisley was, alongside Monet, one of the most consistently dedicated landscape painters of the Impressionist circle, working almost exclusively en plein air and rarely turning to figure painting, portraiture or still life the way Renoir and Pissarro did. He exhibited in the first Impressionist group exhibition in 1874 and participated in several of the subsequent independent shows, painting repeatedly around the Seine and Loing valleys, Louveciennes, Marly-le-Roi and Argenteuil, before settling at Moret-sur-Loing in 1880 for the rest of his life. Despite being a founding participant and a close friend of Monet and Renoir, Sisley achieved far less commercial success and recognition during his lifetime than his peers, and died in relative poverty in 1899, only gaining a major posthumous reputation later.

Facts

Birth Year

1839 1

Death Year

1899 1

Nationality

British 1

British by parentage and citizenship (his parents were British expatriates in the silk trade); lived almost his entire life in France painting the French landscape and requested French citizenship late in life, but never obtained it.

Birth Date

1839-10-30 1

Death Date

1899-01-29 1

Birthplace

Paris, France 1

Death Place

Moret-sur-Loing, France 1

Active From Year

1862 1

Active To Year

1899 1

Training

Sent to London around 1857 to train for a business career; abandoned this after about four years and returned to Paris in 1861; from 1862 studied at the atelier of Charles Gleyre, where he met and befriended Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Frederic Bazille. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

In Movement

Impressionism

A founding participant who exhibited in the first Impressionist exhibition (1874) and several subsequent shows, painting almost exclusively landscape.

Source Wikipedia