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.)