Cathy's Art Diary

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...

A nice small exhibition at the National Gallery looking at works done by Sisley on his visits to England and Wales. I had not realised that Sisley’s parents were both British and that he was sent to London to study commerce when he was 18. There he discovered the works of Turner and Constable. On his trip in 1874 he sought out views similar to the Seine in Paris and created a series of pictures of the Thames at Hampton Court. I loved the one of the view under the bridge at Hampton Court. It was a wonderfully unusually angle for a picture. Following his marriage in Cardiff in 1897 he travelled in Wales with his wife working at Penarth and on the Gower Peninsular. There is a lovely series of three pictures of rocks which seem to act as a study in how the waves and shore interact with it. Reviews Guardian Independent Evening Standard