New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1914-12-06
SisIey and His Place Among the
ImpressiOnists.

SisIey and His Place Among the
Impressionists.
In 1875 Alfred Sisley. who had once
been so well supplied with private
means that he could paint simply to
please himself, was confronted by the
necessity of painting for living. One
way of launching the new order of
things was 20 send some pictures to
the Hotel Drouot. He did so, and the
fwenty-one canvases fetched 2,455
francs. Two years later ne tried again.
this time with eleven pictures. and got
/ .3S7 francs for his pains. But NJ. Du-
ret, who tells the pitiful story, also
tells the inevitable sequel. Sisley died
in January. 1899. After three months
another collection was drawn from his
studio, one of twenty-seven landscapes,
and they brought the comfortable total
of 1890 francs. The circumstance IS
not inaptly to be recalled in the pres
erce of the pictures by Sisley which
are just now on view at the Durand-
Ruel Gallery. Time brings its re-
venges. Sisley was once a malcOn-
tent, a revolutiOnist. Now he is 2 type
of conservatism. In a world rocked by
Cubist and similar vagaries he seems
as steady as q rock. Like the other
impressionists. Manet and Monet, he
rebukes the innovations of later day.
1t is an easy hypothesis which would
anticipate a similarly secure position
for the pioneers" now at work, easy
until one looks to the facts. Our new
movements" are promoted by men
who think they can spin truth out Of
their entrails. Sisley gave nature her
chance. That is why these old pictures
of his, souvenirs of the influence of
Monet upon him back IN the 70's and
SOS, make an appeal as potent as that
Of a Corot or a Daubigny. They are
so true. so patiently and so charmingly
true. When the methods of the i'm
pressionists come up for discussion
there is always something to be said
about Sisley's individual gamut Of
color and about his delicacy in the eX-
preston of landscape forms. George
Moore. for example, duly notes how
much less decorative he Is than Monet.
But he draws nearer to the point when
he says of Sisley that he is more
meditative" than his famous colleague.
Our own idea of it is that Sisley is the
one man in the whole group who was
concerned to draw the portrait Of a
place. Landscape for him was full of
character. He is frequently disap-
pointing if one looks in his work for
the specially felicitous composition.
He did not always fall upon the spe-
cially felicitous motive. and 1t never
occurred TO MIN TO invent what he
could not see. He was satisfied, in
stead, to make the best Of the subject
nearest his hand, which usually meant
some quite simple, unromantic passage
in the French countryside. He had
plenty of technique. Witness the posi-
lively brilliant generalization in the
lovely "Saules au bord de POrvanne."
But il is Of the loveliness in Sisley's
work that one always thinks first, the
friendly meadows. the church tower
or farm roofs lifted above the sunny
orchards, the lesfess trees with their
wild boughs so scnsitively defined, the
racv French atmosphere that fills his
scenes. Manet, we know, could make
an exhibition infinitely more interest
ing TO the connoisseur OF painting.
But he could not make il, as Sisley
makes this one, source of bland de-
light 20 the mere lover of beauty.