In his latest exhibition catalogue forward Andrew Tozer mentions the Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley's visit to Falmouth. I was interested by this. Interested to read about this possible convergence of art and Falmouth's histories and also by Andrew's citing as an influence a painter I knew very little about. So for curiosity's sake I've had a look at Sisley's work and at how it might possibly relate to Andrew's. It's posted here for anyone else similarly interested.

Alfred Sisley (b 1839 in Paris of English parents) is the forgotten Impressionist. He was there from the movements conception, to be found painting in the forests of Fontainebleau alongside the young Monet, Renoir and Bazille his friends and fellow pupils of Gleyre. His work remained true to the ideas that orginated there yet alone of that original circle he failed to achieve critical success in his lifetime or to escape pursuit by financial difficulties. The century of thought, reinterpretation and revision that followed the movement has done little to rescue him from this marginalisation.

Sisley is the only Impressionist to have concentrated his attention solely on landscape painting. He travelled little in his life and worked mainly around the small towns up and down the Seine from Paris. Indeed the river is his recurring motif, holding the broken reflection of poplar trees, yawning wide and expansive past a leisured tow path, bridged and worked and flooded. His paintings are faithful to the original intent of the Impressionists, a reaction against the idealising and moralising of the academic tradition and a reaction to a rapidly changing world, one interested in science, individualism and in itself. They are an exploration of light and colour and a pursuit of delicate sensation and the transience of atmosphere. Andrew described Sisley as the 'truest of the Impressionists' also using the word 'humble'. I like this, it suggests the idea that while Sisley's paintings are about the 'I' of subjective experience the 'I' is not stressed as it was to be throughout modernism. His work remained modest in scale and ambition and he remained humble before his subject and painting's tradition. This may well may explain why his work has been so often overlooked but also why the gentle sincerity it resonates appeals to us today.

As far as I can work out Sisley visited Falmouth in 1874, at the most productive and successful period of his career. On this visit he produced a series of paintings at Hampton Court, paintings which Sir Kenneth Clark has described as constituting 'the perfect moment of impressionism'. To address Andrew's question of what Sisley might have painted had he painted in Falmouth I think it worth considering one of Andrew's recent paintings 'Morning Light Falmouth Seafront'. The Falmouth hotel was built in 1850 and is a motif that I think would have appealed to Sisley, drawn as he was to the meeting points of man and nature. As seen in Andrew's composition the hotel surveys and commands the sweeping vista of Castle Beach. It stands proudly as a symbol of the newly leisured class's claiming of nature and the new industries taming of it. But crucially it does not dominate. Andrew, as I think Sisley would have done, shows man's intervention in harmony with and reconciled to the nature that cradles it. The rhythmical line of the road echoes that of the beach, the sensitively noted effects of light on the buildings temper and diffuse it's hard unnatural geometry. If we compare Andrews painting to one of Sisley's from the year of his visit 'Snow on the Road, Louveciennes' we can also note the painterly similarities. Both paintings nod to an older landscape tradition by use of a receding path to give depth to the work and a pavement for the eye. Both use a restricted pallet to achieve a unity and balance of colour. Both artists employ the same notation to describe different things, again for the effect of balance and unity. The curved flicks of dusty yellow Andrew uses beautifully to animate the bushes in the foreground are the same flicks that define the lower beach and the water's edge. Similarly the branches of Sisley's trees are constructed of the same dry scrubbed marks that indicate the rocks that punctuate the snow. Although Andrew's painting is dynamic and rhythmic to Sisley's contemplative both artists employ a similar diversity of mark and both utilise an unevenness of surface finish. Both works also seek to situate themselves at that tantalising point between paint and illusion, where neither dominates and the mind is left jumping between the appreciation of each as between the duck and the rabbit. Both are great paintings.

It is worth noting that while talking with Andrew about this he did mention a far broader range of influences than just the Impressionists. He is a very engaging conversationalist on painting and led our brief disussion far and wide across the subject. Interestingly he describes himself having arrived at Impressionism via various other painters and rather by the back door. He was particularly enthusiastic about Sir William Nicholson who's work has a similar balance and humility to Sisley's but who employed a much freer and more joyous paint handling. I would like to finish with something else Andrew said while on the topic of humbleness and the role of art to serve. He said he'd always liked the quote attributed to Matisse, that 'art should be like a favourite chair'. I couldn't agree more.

Richard Dinnis, May 2008

Andrew Tozer: Close to Home can be seen at Beside the Wave 03 May 08 - 15 May 08

Alfred Sisley: Sisley in England and Wales can be seen at the National Gallery 12 Nov. 08 - 08 Feb. 09

Lewis, M T Critical Readings in Impressionism and Post Impressionism (University of California Press, 2007)

Shone, R Sisley (Phaidon, 1979)

Smith P Impressionism (Orion Publishing Group 1995)

Stevens, M A Alfred Sisley (Royal Academy of Arts 1992)