The landscape paintings of Alfred Sisley (1839-99) occupy an inviolable position in the history of early Impressionism. His depictions of the Thames at Hampton Court. the Seine in flood, the snow-bound suburbs of Paris are indispensable to an account of Impressionist landscape painting in the 1870s. Indeed, they are so fundamentally representative of our notion of what constitutes 'pure' Impressionism. that the re-evaluation of the movement in recent years has often left Sisley stranded outside it. This has greatly added to the comparative neglect of his work. He is famous but not known, admired but little studied. Many accounts of Impressionism treat him perfunctorily; assessments run on the comfortable premise that he was a marvellous painter for two or three years but became a victim of his style and collapsed into an irreversible decline...

  Introduction 7

1 Between England and France 13

2 Eleve de Gleyre 21

3 Family Affairs 39

4 An Impressionist in the Suburbs 51

5 Hampton Court 67

6 Marly-le-Roi in Snow and Flood 85

7 Patrons and Poverty 109

8 Seine et Marne 125

9 A Changed Man 141

10 Moret and La Vieille Eglise 159

11 A Midsummer Marriage 183

12 'Mon Malheureux Ami' 195

Notes 202

Appendices 215

Chronology 224

Bibliography 232

Acknowledgements 235

Index 237