Sisley, Alfred

Sisley, Alfred (1839-1899), French landscape painter, born in Paris of English parents. He was a pupil in the studio of the Swiss painter Charles Gabriel Gleyre, where he met Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir. With them, he became one of the founders of the Impressionist school of painting. Although Sisley's work attracted little attention in his lifetime, its importance has since been recognized. Sisley's gentle, idyllic paintings, mainly of scenes near Paris, reveal the lifelong influence of Camille Corot, especially in their soft, harmonious colours. They include La Seine à Bougival (c. 1872, Yale University Gallery of Art, New Haven, Connecticut), Flood at Port-Marly (1876, Louvre, Paris), and Street in Moret (1888, Art Institute of Chicago).