French 1839-1899 Alfred Sisley Galleries Alfred Sisley (October 30, 1839 ?C January 29, 1899) was an English Impressionist landscape painter who was born and spent most of his life in France. Sisley is recognized as perhaps the most consistent of the Impressionists, never deviating into figure painting or finding that the movement did not fulfill his artistic needs. Sisley was born in Paris to affluent English parents; William Sisley was in the silk business, and his mother Felicia Sell was a cultivated music connoisseur. At the age of 18, Sisley was sent to London to study for a career in business, but he abandoned it after four years and returned to Paris. Beginning in 1862 he studied at the atelier of Swiss artist Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre, where he became acquainted with Fr??d??ric Bazille, Claude Monet, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Together they would paint landscapes en plein air (in the open air) in order to realistically capture the transient effects of sunlight. This approach, innovative at the time, resulted in paintings more colorful and more broadly painted than the public was accustomed to seeing. Consequently, Sisley and his friends initially had few opportunities to exhibit or sell their work. Unlike some of his fellow students who suffered financial hardships, Sisley received an allowance from his father??until 1870, after which time he became increasingly poor. Sisley's student works are lost. His earliest known work, Lane near a Small Town is believed to have been painted around 1864. His first landscape paintings are sombre, coloured with dark browns, greens, and pale blues. They were often executed at Marly and Saint-Cloud.  Related Paintings of Alfred Sisley :. | Early Snow at Louveciennes | Saint-Mammes am Morgen | Saint-Mammes et les Bords du Loing | Inondation a Moret | Baumallee bei einem Stadtchen |
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George John Pinwell,RWS
1842-1875 English illustrator and painter. He was born in humble circumstances and was largely untrained. He was briefly a student at St Martin's Lane Art School and at Heatherley's. From 1863 he contributed woodblock illustrations to magazines, establishing his reputation in 1865 with the Dalziel brothers' editions of The Arabian Nights and The Works of Oliver Goldsmith. Pinwell's finest drawings were commissioned for the Dalziels' poetry gift-books. With another illustrator, John William North (1842-1924), he worked at Halsway Manor in Somerset in 1865, experimenting with formal effects based on the structure of stone farm buildings or on the wooden beams of barn interiors (his drawings do not seem to have survived). Some of the illustrations for A Round of Days (1866) and Wayside Posies (1867) present an ideal vision of the countryside, but a vein of social concern is also present. In The Journey's End, from Wayside Posies, a strolling player lies dead, worn out by hardship and hunger. For an illustrated edition of Jean Ingelow's Poems (1867),
Marstrand, Wilhelm
Danish, 1810-1873 Danish painter and illustrator. He was a student of C. W. Eckersberg at the Kunstakademi in Copenhagen (1825-33). His art reflects his constant observation of the world around him, in particular middle-class society, and the narrative element dominated his pictures of crowds in the city streets. Throughout his life he sought inspiration from literature and the theatre. In his early genre painting Moving Day Scene (1831; Niv?, Nivaagaards Malsaml.) it was the popular novelty of vaudeville that interested him. The October Festival (1839; Copenhagen, Thorvaldsens Mus.) reveals how Marstrand's five-year stay (1836-41) in Italy opened his eyes to the classical ideal of beauty. It was, however, an ideal that found little response in contemporary Denmark, and he turned towards a more anecdotal and humorous approach. In Scene of Country Life (1843; Copenhagen, Kon. Dan. Kstakad.), painted as a set subject for the Kunstakademi, Marstrand took as his theme a scene from Erasmus Montanus, a play by the 18th-century Danish poet and playwright Ludvig Holberg. Thereafter Holberg's comedies provided an inexhaustible source that satisfied Marstrand's need to pursue his investigations of human character. Family life similarly interested him throughout his career, as in his Scene of Daily Life (1857; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst). Such group portraits as The Waagepetersen Family (1836; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst) show an equal concern to depict the quiet details of Danish domestic life. Marstrand continued to travel abroad in search of inspiration. His stay in Venice in 1853-4 was particularly important; his studies there of the great Venetian painters improved his understanding of the handling of colour, as seen clearly in the many historical and religious paintings of his last years. Of particular interest is his mural decoration of Christian IV's chapel in Roskilde Cathedral (1864-6) with scenes from the life of the Danish monarch. Marstrand's paintings have a certain facetiousness which often obscures a much deeper philosophical content. For this reason, it is his drawings that arouse more admiration.
Cornelius Varley
English Painter, 1781-1873 Painter, draughtsman and printmaker, brother of (1) John Varley. Primarily a scientist, he painted watercolours for pleasure. He was less prolific than his brother. Although he was also a founder-member of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours, he exhibited few watercolours there from 1805 to 1820 and even fewer at the Royal Academy and the Society of British Artists between 1820 and 1859 and 1826 and 1844