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.)