Alfred Sisley, a French Impressionist painter, was born in Paris in 1839. His English parents
intended for him to go into the financial industry, but Sisley chose instead to dedicate himself
to painting.
Sisley has been compared to his longtime friend and colleague, Claude Monet, whom he
met while studying at the Gleyre studio in Paris in the early 1860s. Like Monet, Sisley devoted
most of his career to painting Impressionistic landscapes.
Sisley's style differed somewhat from that of the Impressionist school; his brushstroke
was firm and created a higher definition of form, a technique reminiscent of English landscape
painters. Most of his paintings, however, are of scenes in and around Paris. His most
significant series of landscapes depict the flood of 1876 at Port-Marley. He was able to record
diverse light effects by painting in the open-air at different times of the day.
Although Sisley contributed to many of the Impressionistic exhibitions, he never
received the recognition of his peers while he was alive.
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