William Rimmer: Lectures

"Interior, Before the Picture"
by William Rimmer

"The interest in Dr. William Rimmer's lectures and his work increased rapidly, and a petition was sent to the authorities of the Lowell Institute, asking that he should be invited to give a course of lectures there. The petition was favorably received, and the course begun Oct. 14, 1863. The hall was so crowded at these lectures that he delivered an extra series in the afternoon for ladies, that the regular evenings might be given up to gentlemen exclusively. At his suggestion a class was formed, including most of the artists, draughtsmen and architects in Boston, for the purpose of drawing from casts at the Boston Athenaeum, the doctor directing and criticizing their work without charge.

The public interest resulted in his giving for the thousand dollars paid him for his Lowell Institute course of ten lectures, about five times the work expected. His work was very much appreciated as this letter from his class for women testifies:

Dear Sir, We, the pupils of the Ladies' Class in Art Anatomy of the Lowell Institute, cannot close our lessons with you for the winter without expressing our deep sense of gratitude for the valuable instruction you have given us. Not restricting yourself to the hours engaged by the Lowell Institute, you have given up your time and strength to extra lessons in the class and at the Athenaeum, which have increased many-fold the worth of the regular instruction... By offering to women the same instruction and the same thorough training as to men, you have taken an important practical step in opening to them wider resources of intellectual and aesthetic culture, as well as remunerative industry. We cannot hope to repay you fully for what you have done for us; but we ask you to accept this collection of the great works of the poets of our mother tongue, as a proof of our respectful and grateful remembrance of your services. 

We hope they will solace many a weary hour, and pleasantly remind you of the hours spent with your first public class in Boston... We remain your attached and grateful pupils.

Ednah Cheney, and Fifty Others

In Rimmer's response to their sentiment and gift, he expressed his firm belief in the abilities of women to excel:

Ladies... I have indeed, as you say, given the same instruction to women as to men, because I believed and still believe that art intellectually is as independent of sex as thought itself. And hence, believing that art ability is the same in women as men, I saw no reason why the same knowledge should not be conferred upon the one as well as the other..."

It is interesting that there were a significant number of excellent women artists from Boston at this time. Ellen Day Hale, Anne Whitney (sculptor) and May Alcott Nieriker (artist) were among those who had attended his lectures. I also wonder if his example had laid the groundwork for William Morris Hunt's art class for women (forty of them who had asked him for such) just five years later in 1868. 

(Excerpts from "The Art Life of William Rimmer: Sculptor, Painter, and Physician" by Truman Howe Bartlett.)
 

William Rimmer: Instructor on Anatomy

The muscles of the back
from "Art Anatomy" by William Rimmer

"The most important result of the production of the 'St. Stephen' and 'The Falling Gladiator' was the interest which these works excited in Boston, and which led to the sculptor's being invited to the city to give lectures and instruction in art anatomy. Mr. Stephen Perkins and other prominent gentlemen united cordially in this invitation, yet Dr. Rimmer considered it with much hesitancy and misgiving. However, with the welfare of his family as his principal thought, he accepted the invitation.

On November 1, 1861, Dr. Rimmer began his lectures in room No. 55 of Studio Building. They were attended by old and young of all classes and both sexes, by artists who wished to learn, by literary people who came to enjoy an intellectual feast, and by physicians and other professionals who were delighted to see the human figure delineated and its art functions explained. No man had ever appeared in Boston who exhibited such knowledge, such facility in drawing every part of the figure, both in its details and in its composite character. 

His method of teaching was new. He drew in chalk upon a blackboard every bone and muscle with which the artist needed to be acquainted; first as an independent fact, and then in its relations to the formation of the complete figure. Each member of the body was next drawn, to illustrate its principal physical movements, actions, and purposes, and finally the entire figure was similarly illustrated. As soon as an object was drawn on the blackboard, the pupil was expected to copy it in his sketchbook, writing down the observations made in relation to it. While this was being done, the doctor went about among the pupils, giving hints and explanations. 

As soon as the pupil had attained proficiency, he was required to sketch upon the blackboard the exercises previously studied, to be criticized by the master and other pupils. The delineations were followed by the use of the skeleton and living models, Dr. Rimmer often taking from the audience some person as an illustration of the type of character under consideration."

(Excerpts from "The Art Life of William Rimmer: Sculptor, Painter, and Physician" by Truman Howe Bartlett.)

William Rimmer: The Falling Gladiator

"The Falling Gladiator" by William Rimmer

"Stephen Perkins, who had been deeply impressed with William Rimmer's 'St. Stephen,' strongly encouraged the doctor to now execute a full-sized statue. He advanced a hundred dollars towards the project with which the statue could be started. On the 4th of February, 1861, this important work was begun. It was executed without the assistance of models, except such aid as the sculptor could derive from the study of his own body, in two hundred hours stolen from days already fully occupied. It was completed on the 10th of June, 1861, in the sculptor's forty-sixth year.

Rimmer worked in a small, low-windowed basement room of the house in which he lived. The lower half of the window was covered, so that passers-by could not observe what was going on within, the house being almost on the line of the sidewalk. He worked without any of the facilities usually employed by sculptors for the setting-up of a statue in clay, bracing up with sticks the different parts as he built them with his hands. The difficulties he encountered were innumerable.

He had no fire in the room, The clay froze and dried, cracking and falling down, so that parts of the statue were made many times over. He also was not a modeller; he did not develop a statue by a general and gradual building-up, but piled up the clay or plaster, and cut from it the figure, after the manner of a wood or stone carver. It was finally cast in plaster and finished in that material. The workmen who performed this operation came near destroying the entire statue; and to their carelessness they added the charge of what Dr. Rimmer understood to be an extravagant price for their labor. Of this last complication he wrote: 'Such is the pressure of life everywhere, in all men, that truth is of less importance than gain, the soul less than the body.'

Mr. Perkins watched its daily progress with the liveliest interest. In fact, public interest was growing as well, and Rimmer began to receive more visitors than he wanted who wished to see what he was creating. One said, 'I had never seen anything like it, and I could not understand or explain the existence of such a person. We had never had such an artist in Boston. Everyone who cared a fig for art became interested in Rimmer, and it was determined to induce him to come to the city and give instruction.'

In 1862 Mr. Perkins sailed for Europe, taking plaster copies of the 'The Falling Gladiator' and 'St. Stephen.' These were first exhibited in London, and afterward in the Paris Salon of 1863. Amazingly 'The Falling Gladiator' was declared by certain persons who saw it in Paris to be a cast from life and the attempt to palm it off as a modelled statue ridiculed. Mr. Perkins had hoped, that, by taking these casts to Europe, he might win for his friend a recognition abroad which would greatly improve his standing at home. These good intentions came to nought. 

The original plaster cast of 'The Falling Gladiator' was exhibited in Boston on various occasions for several years before Dr. Rimmer moved to New York. It was also shown at the exhibition of the National Academy of Design in 1865 or 1866, and was afterward removed to the Cooper Institute when Dr. Rimmer assumed the charge of the School of Design in that institution.  In the spring of 1880, it was sent to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where it now occupies an honored position."

 (Excerpts from "The Art Life of William Rimmer: Sculptor, Painter, and Physician" by Truman Howe Bartlett.)

William Rimmer: Struggles

"St. Stephen" by William Rimmer

"In 1855 William Rimmer moved with his family to Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he began systematically the practice of his new profession, medicine. A distinguished specialist from Boston, whom he called in for consultation on a difficult case, finding Rimmer practicing with neither professional examination nor diploma, and being pleased with his treatment of the patient, advised him to join the Suffolk County Medical Society, which the doctor did, receiving a diploma.

But certain qualities are necessary to the popularity of a physician which he did not possess, and without these profound knowledge is not sufficient. Finding his practice insufficient to support him, he conceived the idea of eking out his narrow income by working in granite. His power of production in form had been unexercised for many years, but during that time his knowledge of the human figure had greatly increased. How he was able to procure the granite happened in this way. One day he was called to attend to a patient who, as a result, was very pleased with his treatment for bronchitis. This man also owned a granite factory, and gave him the granite out of which Rimmer cut a female head and one of St. Stephen.

This grateful patient also introduced him to Mr. Stephen H. Perkins, who became Dr. Rimmer's good angel. Mr. Perkins encouraged Rimmer to continue his efforts as a sculptor. 'Be an artist,' he said. 'There are plenty of doctors, but few artists.' As a response to this friendly interest was executed the St. Stephen. It was cut from a block of granite, and without a model or any of the facilities usually considered indispensable for the accomplishment of such an undertaking. It represents the head of a man past middle age, in great agony, thrown upward and back, as if vainly appealing for protection, which the raised right should indicates the arm lifted in defence. Rimmer worked on this with such energy that his hands were blistered and torn, his arms swollen, and his whole body exhausted in aching sympathy with the activity of his spirit.

It might almost be said that the work symbolized Dr. Rimmer's relation to the world. It shows combative, wonderful, concentrative haste, and is a striking illustration of the characteristics of his nature."

(Excerpts from "The Art Life of William Rimmer: Sculptor, Painter, and Physician" by Truman Howe Bartlett.)

William Rimmer: Studies in Medicine

"The Crucifixion" by William Rimmer

"In 1840 William Rimmer married Miss Mary H.C. Peabody, a Quakeress, and soon after started on a tour of portrait-painting through the towns of Randolph, Norfolk County, and Brockton in Plymouth County, Massachusetts. His success was, on the whole, pretty satisfactory, although at the time of his marriage he was seriously considering the plan of studying medicine as a more certain means of support. 

When he decided to become a physician, he found in a doctor friend's library the medical works that he wished to study, and in the doctor a good advisor and teacher. He heard him recite twice a week, giving him at all times every assistance that lay in his power. Rimmer had already much knowledge of some branches of the subject, especially of anatomy. "He impressed me more than any person I ever knew as an original mind. Our conversations concerned the powers of observation, perception, the internal recognition of things," reminisced Dr. Kingman. Rimmer also had another doctor friend who introduced him to the dissecting room.

Every moment the doctor could get during his ten-years' residence, aside from the time given to his shoemaking and studies, he spent in painting portraits, ideal compositions, and miniatures. Neither did he wholly relinquish sculpture: for he cut a small portrait bust of his oldest daughter, then three years old, in marble. He also painted a large altar-piece for the local Catholic priest, including the crucifixion which had been painted without a model. Although he believed in using models and in studying life to gain knowledge and a great power of expression, in the execution of a work he rarely consulted them and depended entirely upon his memory and imagination.

Rimmer worked at his various occupations with such intense zeal that more than once he fell from his cobbler's bench from sheer exhaustion, but earned enough to buy a small home, and had a family of boys and girls growing up about him."

(Excerpts from "The Art Life of William Rimmer: Sculptor, Painter, and Physician" by Truman Howe Bartlett.)

William Rimmer: The Death of Abel

"Civil War Scene" by William Rimmer

An old acquaintance of William Rimmer told of an important art enterprise in which he was a partner with young Rimmer:

'I think it was in 1838 or '39,' he said, 'that I was passing with Rimmer along Tremont Row, where a picture called 'Cain and Abel' was on exhibition. It attracted much attention, and was bringing in considerable money to those exhibiting it. Rimmer said to me, 'If I had a chance, I could paint a picture as good as that one.' I asked him why he did not do it, and make some money; for at that time he was out of both funds and employment. I told him I would furnish the means of carrying out the scheme, if he would undertake the work, with the understanding that we were to share alike in the profits. He accepted. 

A large room was hired, the necessary material procured, and he set to work. The canvas must have been eight feet square. Rimmer worked like a tiger. It was a pleasure to see him. He called his picture 'After the Death of Abel,' and it represented Adam and Eve mourning over the dead body of their son. No one could have worked harder than he did for six or eight weeks. He purposed at first painting Eve perfectly nude, but feared that this would offend public prejudice, and therefore gave her certain draperies which one of his friends said looked like a door mat. 'It ought to,' Rimmer responded, 'it was painted from one!'

The picture was completed, and placed upon exhibition in the room where it was painted, an entrance fee of twenty-five cents being charged to visitors. The color was not pleasing, it was not a success so far as money was concerned. Rimmer lost his time, and I was out sixty dollars. The disappointment was a severe one to him and he felt it deeply. My loss troubled him although he was in no way to blame. From the time this transaction ended, I did not speak with him for nearly thirty years. When I saw him on the street, he was sure to cross to the other side before we could meet.

Twenty-odd years later I heard that he had a school in Bromfield Street. Passing this place one day, I thought I would go up and see if were the same Bill Rimmer of the old times. I mounted the stairs, found the door and knocked. A voice called out, 'Come in!' I opened the door, walked in, and saw Rimmer painting a large landscape with figures. 'Bill,' I said before he could turn, 'your color hasn't improved much in thirty years.' He wheeled about with a look that could have pitched me down stairs, but recognizing my face, he grasped my hand, expressed his pleasure at seeing me, and we soon were talking over the old days in a most delightful manner."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Art Life of William Rimmer: Sculptor, Painter, and Physician" by Truman Howe Bartlett.)

William Rimmer: Artistic Tendencies

"Despair" by William Rimmer

"An artistic tendency showed itself in the child William before he was out of pinafores; his first expression of this being to cut up an entire chintz bedquilt into butterflies without telling anyone of his performance. His parents were rather pleased, than otherwise, with this unusual transformation and encouraged the boy's creative fancies.  Shoemaker's wax was twisted into dragons and other frightful beasts, while it only needed the aid of a penknife to transform bits of chalk into equally strange and fanciful forms. 

In 1826, when William was ten years of age, the Rimmer family came to Boston and lived for a few years in a little unnamed street opposite what is now Wales' Wharf. On the wharf was a granite yard and a storehouse for gypsum. One who was a playmate of William at this time and comrade for many years after, relates that his friend used to cut from the gypsum and alabaster, figures as large as himself.

As soon as the boys were old enough, they assisted their father at his trade, and although shoemaking was not productive of a luxurious or certain income, yet by hard and steady work the Rimmers were not only able to obtain a living, but to save something wherewith to purchase books, colors, and other necessities of art and educational progress. The rare half-holidays were devoted to drawing, painting, or to long tramps into the woods to gather flowers and to study plants, botany and ornithology being included in their list of studies. 

By the age of fifteen William launched out as a painter of portraits, signs, or other pictures, and as a draughtsman. By the aid of some influential friend whose notice had been attracted by his unusual talents, he secured a place in a studio on Bylston Street, but this arrangement was of no great duration. For portraits he received from five to twenty dollars each. 

No trace of any of the work done at this time can be found, with the single exception of a little sitting figure carved in gypsum, when he was fifteen. It was studied from life, and represents his father's physical and mental characteristics. It is 'Despair.' Of all the works left by Dr. Rimmer, this is one of the most interesting and significant, possibly the most so. It shows the frankest loyalty to the model, a wonderful concentration in the composition of the figure and a natural genius for expression. These two qualities characterize all of Dr. Rimmer's work. As he grew older, nature, as felt in this figure, became subordinate to the imagination, to knowledge, to construction"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Art Life of William Rimmer: Sculptor, Painter, and Physician" by Truman Howe Bartlett.)

 

William Rimmer: His Father

"Dr. William Rimmer was well known in art circles in Boston for the eighteen years preceding his death in 1879, as a remarkable lecturer upon art anatomy, a skillful delineator of its forms, as the sculptor of several statues and busts, and as a man who had painted much without establishing a reputation as a painter. For four years he was also known in New York as the director of the School of Design for Women at the Cooper Institute.

Rimmer's father belonged to a branch of the one of the royal families of France. Born during the revolution of 1789, he was reared from his infancy in the utmost seclusion in England, in the home of an English family. Distinction, with royal favor, was almost within his possession, when political and family complications suddenly arose, and the young man found his inheritance wrongfully taken from him, and he soon discovered, too, that neither his birthright nor name would avail him anything in the scale of justice. 

He sailed for Nova Scotia where he landed in 1818. Determined to be forever done with his old life, he abandoned even his name, concealing his identity under the name 'Thomas Rimmer,' and selecting the trade of a shoemaker as being the means of earning a livelihood which would be likely to bring him least in contact with his fellowmen. Soon after his arrival, he sent for his wife, Mrs. Mary Rimmer, an Irish lady, and for his only child, William, born in Liverpool just two years before. 

All that the father had suffered had a scarcely less direct effect upon the son that its actual experience would have had, and, while still a boy in years, William was in feeling a wronged and saddened man."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Art Life of William Rimmer: Sculptor, Painter, and Physician" by Truman Howe Bartlett.)

Alfred Sisley: Seine et Marne

"Banks of the Seine at By" by Alfred Sisley

"Seine et Marne, on the eastern edge of the Ile de France, was to be Alfred Sisley's countryside for the last 20 years of his life. He moved to Veneux-Nadon in 1880, having been evicted from his house in Sèvres for not paying his rent. It is clear from the subjects of his paintings, however, that he had been coming to the area to work for some years before he moved his family there permanently. 

It was an agriculturally rich and peaceful countryside, well wooded, and with many historic towns and villages. It was, in fact, an ideal region for Sisley to work in, far enough away from the turmoil of the artistic world of Paris to enable him to turn his back on such disappointments as rejection by the Salon and concentrate on what mattered most: producing serene and lovely pictures such as this autumn scene.

At one point Sisley, desperate for money, wrote to Théodore Duret, one of the Impressionists greatest supporters, suggesting a deal. 'Might you be able to find some intelligent man. . .  who has enough fatih in your artistic knowledge to be persuaded to spend a bit of money on a painting by an artist who is on the very verge of recognition?' he wrote. Duret did not find such a man, but he was able to sell several of Sisley's paintings, thus relieving his financial distress for a time.

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Works of Sisley" by Janice Anderson.)

Alfred Sisley: Marly-le-Roi

"The View of Marly-le-Roi" by Alfred Sisley

"Shortly after his return from his extended visit to England in 1874, Alfred Sisley and his family moved from the hillside village of Louveciennes to Marly-le-Roi, a riverside village in the environs of Paris. Here the financial difficulties which had dogged him for years persisted."

[There was much to interest the painter here. Even though the royal palace at Marly-le-Roi had been destroyed at the time of the French Revolution, his pictures in and around the old royal hunting park there were imbued with a sense of royal presence and past grandeur. There were the verdant fields around the town, and he also created several paintings of the floods experienced there over the years.]

"In March 1875 Sisley arranged, with Renoir, Monet and others, a public auction of their work in Paris, in the hope of finding buyers from outside the usual group of exhibition-visiting art lovers. The auction at the Hotel Drouot provoked public demonstrations of disapproval at the work of the 'Impressionists'. Although 21 of Sisley's pictures were sold, the prices were too low - an average of 100 francs a picture - to do much to relieve his difficulties. Still, painting remained the only activity of importance in his life."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Works of Sisley" by Janice Anderson.)

Alfred Sisley: Hampton Court, England

"The Bridge at Hampton Court" by Alfred Sisley

"Alfred Sisley's first visit to England as a professional artist came in the summer of 1874. In England, Sisley stayed first in London, near the Victoria and Albert Museum, and did one painting of Charing Cross Bridge before he moved to a small village on the Thames just upriver of Hampton Court. The village was Molesey, a quiet backwater popular with oarsmen and not unlike the villages on the Seine near Paris which had so attracted Sisley and his fellow artists."

"There he painted a radiant series of seventeen images of suburban pleasures: strolling, boating, swimming and amiable sociability under the sunshine and scudding clouds along the Thames.  Sisley was particularly drawn to a 'flagrantly modern' iron-and-brick bridge recently erected across the Thames linking Hampton Court and East Molesey. Although the exact sequence of paintings  is conjectural, it seems his fascination with this structure grew as he studied it.

Among the 17 canvases Sisley completed at Molesey was "The Bridge at Hampton Court, which shows the first span of the crenellated bridge as it steps off the riverbank towards Hampton Court. Rowers in two sculls have just entered the scene and another, empty singles scull tilts towards the viewer where it has been left to rest between two piers. Here Sisley contrasts the bridge, a stolid piece of modern engineering, with quick moving rowers and dancing reflections on the water."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Work of Sisley" by Janice Anderson and "Sisley in England and Wales"  by Christopher Riopelle.)

Alfred Sisley: Louveciennes

"Louveciennes, above Marly" by Alfred Sisley

"Alfred Sisley and his family lived for several years in Louveciennes, a village west of Paris in the forest of Marly, where they moved during the Franco-Prussian War. In the summer of 1871, from the vantage of a high point in Louveciennes, which was built on a ridge above the rive, Sisley, Renoir and Pissarro had watched Paris burn during the Prussian siege of the city. Now, two years later, the view from Louveciennes down over the forest and riverside town of Marly is peaceful and serence. During his time there, Sisley painted many pictures of the village and the surrounding countryside, in summer and in winter."

To be continued

(Excerpt from "The Life and Works of Sisley" by Janice Anderson.)

Alfred Sisley: The Seine at Bougival

"The Seine at Bougival" by Alfred Sisley

 

"Autumn: Banks of the Seine at Bougival" by Alfred Sisley

"Bougival was a riverside village on the left bank of the Seine, a fifteen-minute train ride from Paris, with strong artistic associations. Berlioz, Corot and Meissonier had lived there and Maupassant had used it as the setting for some of his stories. Bougival was virtually immortalized in a string of Impressionist paintings, especially by Alfred Sisley, Renoir, Monet and Pissarro. 

Sisley wrote to his friend, the critic Adolphe Tavernier, sharing this observation about painting outdoors: 'Objects must be rendered with their own texture, especially if they are enveloped in light, as they are in nature . . . The sky cannot be only a background . . . It contributes not only by giving depth to the planes, but also by providing movement, by its form, and by its arrangement in rapport with the composition of the painting.'"

To be continued

(Excerpt from "The Life and Works of Sisley" by Janice Anderson.)

Alfred Sisley: Still Life with Heron

"Still Life with Heron" by Alfred Sisley

"The Heron" by Frédéric Bazille

"Frédéric Bazille at His Easel" by Renoir

In the next portion of Janice Anderson's book on Alfred Sisley, she expands his initial biography by looking more particularly at his paintings, beginning with his "Still Life with Heron."

Still Life with Heron: "Another version of this carefully composed still life of birds exists: it is part of the background of a portrait Pierre Auguste Renoir did of his friend, the artist Frédéic Bazille. Renoir showed Bazille in his Paris studio seated before his easel, on which is a large canvas depicting this same subject. 

At this time the three young artists - Bazille, Renoir and Sisley - were working closely together, each with his own easel and work space in Bazille's studio in the Rue de la Paix. Thus Sisley's still life, among the first of only nine he was to do in the whole course of his artistic life, is more than a simple, yet subtle, composition in shades of grey; it allows us a glimpse into the close companionship of these three young men, embarking together on the artistic life, ready to help each other, to learn from each other and, they hoped, to become successful together."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Works of Sisley" by Janice Anderson.)

Alfred Sisley: Saying Farewell

"Near Moret-sur-Loing" by Alfred Sisley

"Although Alfred Sisley had found some measure of acceptance as an important artist by the early 1890s, being elected to honorary membership of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1890, he was never to know financial security through painting. As late as 1897, the year of his last trip to England and Wales, a major retrospective of his work at the Georges Petit gallery in Paris sold nothing. The following year, Sisley, himself too ill to paint, had to watch his beloved wife die of cancer. Less than four months later, in January 1899, Alfred Sisley died of cancer of the throat. He had called his old friend Claude Monet to his bedside, to say farewell and to recommend his children to Monet's care, and it was Monet who organized a gift of Sisley's work to the nation.

Three months after Sisley's death, the paintings left in his studio were auctioned to raise money for his two children. There was an unseemly scramble as dealers and art collectors fought to get his paintings. The re-assessment of Alfred Sisley as one of the great Impressionists had begun."

(Excerpts from "The Life and Works of Sisley" by Janice Anderson.)

Alfred Sisley: Impressionist

"The Meadow at Veneux-Nadon" by Alfred Sisley

"The inspiration for most of Sisley's art was the land of the Ile de France, the départment surrounding Paris. He made three trips to England - to the Thames Valley, the Isle of Wight and south Wales - and one visit to Normandy. Apart from these places, a group of villages on the Seine near Versailles west of Paris and another group on the Loing south of Paris near Fontainebleau provided him with the inspiration for some of the finest landscapes produced by the Impressionists.

As a professional painter, Sisley considered himself part of the group who came to be known, after their first group exhibition in Paris in 1874, as 'Impressionists'. He was to take part in four of the great Impressionist exhibitions between 1874 and 882, only deciding to go it alone in the 1880s, a period of particular hardship and difficulty for him.

During his life, Sisley never attracted the admiration or even the interest of critics in the way painters like Monet, Renoir and Degas did, perhaps because, compared with them, his style was restrained and quiet, his subject matter limited. It took other artists to see his worth, like Manet's brother, Eugène Manet, who said of Sisley's 27 pictures in the 1882 Impressionist Exhibition that they were 'the most complete and show great progress. He has a lake or canal bordered by trees which is an authentic masterpiece'. Of another painting exhibited by Sisley's dealer Paul Durand-Ruel later that year in Copenhagen, a critic noted that it was 'so delicately light and shimmery, so harmonious in composition, that one could find no fault in it. Here is no attempt to paint anything which could not be made out by the naked eye. The painting achieves its effect by means of airy lightness and unique beauty.'"

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Works of Sisley" by Janice Anderson.) 

 

 

Alfred Sisley: Landscapes

"Landscape at Louveciennes" by Alfred Sisley

"Alfred Sisley's earliest surviving paintings, dating from 1865, were quite heavily painted and tightly observed, in an academic kind of way. There were many still lifes among them, a form he was virtually to abandon in favour of landscape. For Sisley, landscape painting very quickly came to be the cornerstone of his art.

Much influenced in his early paintings by the work of Courbet, Daubigny and Corot - when he first exhibited at the Salon in 1867, he did so as a pupil of Corot - Sisley soon found himself much more interested in the ideas being pursued by the young artists he talked with in the café of Paris' artistic quarters: painting in the open air, reproducing the true light and shade in a subject, using colours as purely as possible.

In the 1860s, Sisley was able to pursue the life of an artist in an easy, untroubled way. In 1868 he married Marie Eugénie Lescouezec, and Renoir painted a delightful study of the handsome young couple. But the Franco-Prussian War [19 July 1870 to 28 January 1871] changed Sisley's life forever. His father's business failed, he went bankrupt and died shortly afterwards. For the rest of his life, Sisley would be chronically short of money, never able to buy a house for his family and always having to move from one cheap rented house to another, sometimes not even able to afford canvases to paint on. He never seemed though to have considered giving up painting. On the contrary, it would always be his only source of income."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Works of Sisley" by Janice Anderson.)

Alfred Sisley: British Impressionist

"Effect of Snow in Louveciennes" by Alfred Sisley

"Although he was born in Paris and lived all his life in the Ile de France, Alfred Sisley's English parents and his quiet, unassuming style, ensured that he would always be thought of as the 'English Impressionist'. He was born in 1839, the same year as Cézanne, which made him a little older than Monet and Renoir, a little younger than Manet and Degas. Although his mother came from a cultured, middle-class London family, his father's business background ensured that art was never considered as a career for his son.

At 18, Alfred Sisley was sent to London to follow an apprenticeship in business. But the teenager quickly discovered the work of the great English landscape artists, including Constable, Turner and Bonington, in London's museums and art galleries, where he also came to admire many European painters, especially the Dutch landscape artists.

By the time he returned to Paris in 1861, Sisley had put all thought of a business career behind him. He persuaded his parents to allow him to enter the studio of the Swiss artist and teacher, Charles Gleyre, where he intended to devote himself full-time to the study of art. Gleyre's fame had attracted many young artists and Sisley soon found himself part of a group of highly talented young men with distinctly revolutionary ideas about the purpose and practice of art. Some became friends for life, including Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir and Fréderic Bazille."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Life and Works of Sisley" by Janice Anderson.)