Studio: international art (18.1900)

Alfred Sisley

Sketched in these eloquent sentences of M.
Tavernier, we have the history of the group from
its inception until to-day. The individual fortunes
of some of its members have been fuller of per-
sonal successes than was the career of Alfred
Sisley, but none of them has fought with nobler
endurance, nor achieved more for the ultimate
prevalence of their ideas, than he.

Since the first considerable exhibition of his
works in the Boulevard des Capucines, in 1874,
in the excellent company of Bracquemond and
Millet, he has executed a great number of land-
scapes, developing the while a continuous pro-
gression toward the attainment of his ideals,
infusing ever more and more of the qualities of
limpidity, airiness, and brilliancy of colouring
into his studies in the environs of Paris, at
Bougival, at Louveciennes, at Port Marly, and at
Moret.

The last decade of his sixty years of life was
given to those quiet beauties of the neighbour-

hood of Moret which have associated him so
intimately in the mind of Paris with his loved
scenes that he has been called, and will be remem-
bered as, the " Painter of Moret."

There was a visit to England, the land of his
paternal ancestry, shortly before the end, produc-
tive of several works which bear witness to his
versatility.

Examined in detail, his work easily divides itself
into periods. The first was unquestionably inspired
by Corot, of whom, as of Delaroche, he was an
ardent admirer, not at all to the subordination of
his individuality, but as evidenced in his choice of
subject for those delightful grey harmonies of cloud,
and wood, and stream, which came so frequently
from his brush in the seventies.

Never timid in style, they show a regard for
surfaces in which something of the old order
lingers ; but this something gradually gave way to a
bolder expression, to a keener search for luminous
effect, and a deeper knowledge of the interrelation