Alfred Sisley
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 :. | Village Street in Marlotte | Kirche von Moret | L inondation Port Marly | Snow at Louveciennes | Pont de Moret-sur-Loing | Related Artists: Albert Joseph Moore,ARWS181-1893
He showed precocious artistic talent as a child and entered the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1858. His early work shows a Pre-Raphaelite influence common to his generation. The watercolour Study of an Ash Trunk (1857; Oxford, Ashmolean) is very Ruskinian in its precise handling of naturalistic detail. Moore made two visits abroad: in 1859 to France with the architect William Eden Nesfield and in the winter of 1862-3 to Rome with his brother John Collingham Moore. Elijah's Sacrifice (1863; exh. RA 1865; Bury St Edmunds, A.G.), one of Moore's earliest large-scale oil paintings, was executed while he was in Rome. Its biblical subject and sombre tone are typical of his output in the early 1860s and relate to the work of Ford Madox Brown and Edward Armitage. William Michael Harnett1851-1892
Harnett was born in Clonakilty, County Cork, Ireland during the time of the potato famine. Shortly after his birth his family emigrated to America, settling in Philadelphia. Becoming a United States citizen in 1868, he made a living as a young man by engraving designs on table silver, while also taking night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later, in New York, at Cooper Union and at the National Academy of Design. His first known oil painting, a still life, dates from 1874.
The style of trompe l'oeil painting that Harnett developed was distinctive and inspired many imitators, but it was not without precedent. A number of 17th century Dutch painters, Pieter Claesz. for instance, had specialized in tabletop still life of astonishing verisimilitude. Raphaelle Peale, working in Philadelphia in the early 19th century, pioneered the form in America. What sets Harnett's work apart, besides his enormous skill, is his interest in depicting objects not usually made the subject of a painting.
Harnett painted musical instruments, hanging game, and tankards, but also painted the unconventional Golden Horseshoe (1886), a single rusted horseshoe shown nailed to a board. He painted a casual jumble of second-hand books set on top of a crate, Job Lot, Cheap (1878), as well as firearms and even paper currency. His works sold well, but they were more likely to be found hanging in a tavern or a business office than in a museum, as they did not conform to contemporary notions of high art.
Harnett spent the years 1880?C1886 in Europe, staying in Munich from 1881 until early 1885. Harnett's best-known paintings, the four versions of After The Hunt, were painted between 1883 and 1885. Each is an imposing composition of hunting equipment and dead game, hanging on a door with ornate hinges at the right and keyhole plate at the left. These paintings, like the horseshoe or currency depictions mentioned earlier, are especially effective as trompe l'oeil because the objects occupy a shallow space, meaning that the illusion is not spoiled by parallax shift if the viewer moves.
Overall, Harnett's work is most comparable to that of the slightly younger John F. Peto. The two artists knew each other, and a comparison can be made between two paintings featuring violins. Harnett's Music and Good Luck from 1888 shows the violin hanging upright on a door with ornate hinges and with a slightly torn piece of sheet music behind it. The elements are arranged in a stable, deliberate manner. Peto's 1890 painting shows the violin hanging askew, as well as chipped and worn, with one string broken. The sheet music is dog-eared and torn around the edges, and placed haphazardly behind the instrument. The hinges are less ornate, and one is broken. Harnett's objects show signs of use but are well preserved, while Peto's more humble objects are nearly used up.
Crippling rheumatism plagued Harnett in his last years, reducing the number but not the quality of his paintings. He died in New York City in 1892. Other artists who painted similar compositions in Harnett's wake include his contemporary John Haberle and successors such as Otis Kaye and Jefferson David Chalfant. Constantin Daniel Stahi (November 14, 1844 - June 18, 1920) was a Romanian painter and gravure artist.
In 1862 he entered the National School of Fine Arts from Iaşi where he was taught by Gheorghe Panaiteanu Bardasare and Gheorghe Şiller. He continued his artistic education in Munich where, for seven years, he studied painting, metal gravure and xylography.
He painted still life paintings representing small objects that were surrounding him, such as old books, newspapers, religious items, chairs, shoes, plates and especially fruits. Also, he painted many portraits of famous people of his time (for example Gheorghe Asachi, painted in 1881). Many others of his paintings take inspiration from the simple life in the countryside in idyllic compositions and by painting peasants having as models people living in Bavaria and Moldova regions.
Beside his artistic career, he was a professor and, later on, the headmaster of the National School of Fine Arts in Iaşi between 1892 and 1902, following Gheorghe Panaiteanu Bardasare.
He died in his house on Bărboi street in Iaşi on June 18, 1920 and was interred at Eternitatea Cemetery.
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