Sisley

Unlike the other impressionist painters (Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissaro,...), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899) had never been the object of an important retrospective exclusively devoted to his work until this exhibition presented in the Musée d'Orsay.
This group of works, which gathered over sixty paintings from French and foreign museums, made it possible to follow the painter's evolution throughout his career. Sisley contributed to the birth of impressionism and the elaboration of this particular technique during the 1860's. Thanks to his mastership when the movement took off in the 1870's, he participated in the first exhibition of the group in 1874 together with Berthe Morisot, Degas, Monet and Pissarro.
His work was almost entirely made of landscapes, at the junction of classical and realistic traditions, half way between Corot's poetry and Monet's "eye".
From his delicately coloured paintings emanate charm and joy. Sisley was able to transfer on canvas some particular aspects of Paris, the beauty of landscapes in Louvecienne, Marly-Le-Roy and Sèvres as well as the charm of the little town of Moret-sur-Loing and its surroundings. Rural landscapes revealing an attention paid to composition, changing skies of Ile-de-France, half tones of Autumn on the banks of the river Loing; the range of colours used by the painter was mostly centered on light blue, green and grey.
Finally, the exhibition highlighted the personal stylistic solution he adopted in 1880's until his death in Moret-Sur-Loing.
Exhibition supported in Paris by Aérospatiale