Sisley: Impressionist

Delightful exhibition at Caumont Centre d'Art in Aix-en-Provence examining the life and work of Alfred Sisley.

I always forget that Sisley’s father was English and Sisley himself trained as a business man in London. The show was chronological but used the places Sisley was working as the narrative rather than the dates. The show explained well how Sisley used paths and roads to lead you into compositions.

The works were lovely and full of light and air although the colours got darker as he got older. Although we thing of his as a great French landscape painter it was great to see three of the fifteen works he did of the river at Hampton Court here. I love the one which looks at the view under the bridge focusing on the structure. There were also a number of his pictures of cliffs near Cardiff which the National Gallery did a small exhibition on a few years ago.

I loved the four pictures near the end, again form a larger series, looking at the façade of a cathedral, an exercise to make a visual mapping of a scene.

Closed on 15 October 2017

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