Alfred Sisley

1876 was the year of the second Impressionist exhibition, and the painters in that loose circle spent a great deal of time in each other's company, arguing about where the group was heading. This is Renoir's portrait of one of them, the landscape painter Alfred Sisley, a close friend. Monet later recalled the three of them together at his house in Argenteuil around this time. Instead of the stiff formality expected of a man's portrait, Renoir has Sisley sitting the wrong way round on a cheap bamboo-style chair, arms folded over its back, his gaze drifting off to one side. It reads less like a commission than like a friend caught in a quiet moment during a long afternoon of talk. Sisley would paint landscapes all his life and die poor in 1899, his reputation arriving only after his death.