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Updated: June 11, 2025
Sisley reproducing the old hypothesis in so bare a form as this: "I am prepared to maintain that varieties are individuals, and that as they are born they must die, like other individuals . . . We know that oaks, Sequoias, and other trees, live several centuries, but how many we do not exactly know. But that they must die, no one in his senses will dispute."
These younger men had apparently miscomprehended idiosyncrasies for ideas and that, save for a certain cleanness of intention, they were offering scarcely anything of what is to be found by way of realization in the pictures of a really great colorist like Renoir. The two artists who give the true thrill of this phase of the modern movement are without question Pissarro and Sisley.
He was an elderly man, with a white beard and a florid complexion, who had painted a number of decorations for the State, but these were an object of derision to the students he instructed: he was a disciple of Ingres, impervious to the progress of art and angrily impatient with that tas de farceurs whose names were Manet, Degas, Monet, and Sisley; but he was an excellent teacher, helpful, polite, and encouraging.
The Caillebotte collection was installed under conditions which the ill-will of the administrators made at least as deplorable as possible. The works were crowded into a small, badly lighted room, where it is absolutely impossible to see them from the distance required by the method of the division of tones, and the meanness of the opposition was such that, the pictures having been bequeathed without frames, the keeper was obliged to have recourse to the reserves of the Louvre, because he was refused the necessary credit for purchasing them. The collection is however beautiful and interesting. It does not represent Impressionism in all its brilliancy, since the works by which it is composed had been bought by Caillebotte at a time, when his friends were still far from having arrived at the full blossoming of their qualities. But some very fine things can at least be found there. Renoir is marvellously represented by the Moulin de la Galette, which is one of his masterpieces. Degas figures with seven beautiful pastels, Monet with some landscapes grand in style; Sisley and Pissarro appear scarcely to their advantage, and finally it is to be regretted, that Manet is only represented by a study in black in his first manner, the Balcony, which does not count among his best pictures, and the famous Olympia whose importance is more historical than intrinsic. The gallery has separately acquired a Young Girl in Ball Dress by Berthe Morisot, which is a delicate marvel of grace and freshness. And in the place of honour of the gallery is to be seen Fantin-Latour's great picture Hommage
Sisley has painted a notable series of pictures in the quaint village of Moret on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau, where he died at a ripe age, and these canvases will figure among the most charming landscapes of our epoch. Sisley was a veteran of Impressionism.
But if Sisley is more meditative than Monet, Pissaro is more meditative than either. Monet had arrived at his style before I saw anything of his work; of his earlier canvases I know nothing. Possibly he once painted in the Corot manner; it is hardly possible that he should not have done so. However this may be, Pissaro did not rid himself for many years of the influence of Corot.
But in all that concerns the mild aspects of the Ile de France, the sweet and fresh landscapes, Sisley is not unworthy of being compared with Monet. He equals him in numerous pictures; he has a similar delicacy of perception, a similar fervour of execution.
There is always a reason for reticence, and it is usually apt to come from thinking. Sisley and Pissarro, Vignon, Seurat, and Robinson were thinking out a way to legitimize the new fantastic craze for prismatic violence, and they found it in the direct consideration for the fact.
Manet died, and this side and this side only of his art was taken up by Monet, Sisley, and Renoir. Or was it that Manet had begun to yield to an influence that of Monet, Sisley, and Renoir which was just beginning to make itself felt? Be this as it may, browns and blacks disappeared from the palettes of those who did not wish to be considered l'ecole des beaux-arts, et en plein.
Miss Van Tuyn wondered again whether he had ever heard of Leonardo. Garstin mentioned some Paris painters of the past, but of more recent times than those of the grand old Italians, spoke of Courbet, of Manet, of Renoir, Guilaumin, Sisley, the Barbizon school, Cezanne and his followers.
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