Alfred Sisley
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,History & Criticism
Alfred Sisley Details
From Publishers Weekly Sisley (1839-1899) remains perhaps the least appreciated of the major Impressionists, partly because of his Anglo-French background. Born into an English family that had settled in France two generations earlier, he lived in wretched poverty and critical neglect, dying of throat cancer at age 60. Wedding 100 color plates and 100 black-and-whites to erudite essays by six scholars, this beautiful album catalogues a major retrospective that opened at London's Royal Academy, moved to the Musee d'Orsay in Paris and will travel to the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore. The contributors emphasize Sisley's purity of vision, his radical compositional experiments and his debts to Constable, Corot and Courbet. Today, paradoxically, some critics see Sisley's unswerving allegiance to impressionism beyond 1870 as a severe limitation, but this study refutes that interpretation by underscoring his modernist subject matter and technique. Stevens is librarian of the Royal Academy. Copyright 1992 Cahners Business Information, Inc. Read more
Reviews
Of the many books on Alfred Sisley this book is the best by far. Most books on the artist are loaded with the same images and a short biography but this book is the exception with studies of his early influences, his contributions to the movement of Impressionism, critiques of his style and subject matter, insights into his personality which made it more difficult for him to be accepted as was Monet and Pissarro were by the art world and collectors. Many of the paintings.images are supplemented with early and recent photos of the subjects he had chosen to paint. An enjoyable part of the book are the old photos of exhibits of his work at the beginning of the 20th Century. Another section reveals Sisley's paintings acceptance by American collectors. One section is revealing about his dealing with the art dealer, Durand-Ruel and the eventual collapse of their relationship. The images are very good and supplemented with enlarge details of his paintings. All in all a very good book and one that any lover of his art should have on their shelf.