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Apple Trees in Flower
Artist:
Alfred Sisley
(French, 1839-1899)
Date: 1880
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
25 1/4 x 31 3/4 in. (64.1 x 80.6 cm)
Overall, Frame: 36 x 42 x 4 in. (91.4 x 106.7 x 10.2 cm)
Classification: European art
Credit Line: Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Object number: 77.412
Terms
- Trees
- Landscape
- People
- Apples
- Blue
- White
- Green
- Pink
- Impressionist
In Collection(s)
On view
DescriptionThis oil on canvas painting portrays apple trees in early spring. A small figure is on the left side of the canvas.
Exhibition History"Exposition d'oeuvres d'Alfred Sisley," Galeries Georges Petit, Paris, May 14 - June 7, 1917.
"French Paintings from The Chrysler Museum", North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, May 31 - September 14, 1986; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, November 6, 1986 - January 18, 1987. (Exhib. cat. no. 37).
"A Revolution in Paint," North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, September 17, 2006 - February 11, 2007.
"Upstairs/Downstairs: Masterpieces from the Chrylser Collection," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, October 10 - December 30, 2012.
"The Agrarian Ideal: Monet, van Gogh, Homer," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, October 7, 2016 - January 8, 2017.
"French Paintings from The Chrysler Museum", North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, May 31 - September 14, 1986; Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama, November 6, 1986 - January 18, 1987. (Exhib. cat. no. 37).
"A Revolution in Paint," North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC, September 17, 2006 - February 11, 2007.
"Upstairs/Downstairs: Masterpieces from the Chrylser Collection," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, October 10 - December 30, 2012.
"The Agrarian Ideal: Monet, van Gogh, Homer," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, October 7, 2016 - January 8, 2017.
Label textAlfred Sisley
French, 1839–1899
Apple Trees in Flower, 1880
Oil on canvas
The brief period that thisa pple orchard stood in blossom provided the French Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley with one of the most spectacular sights in the country. He lived in a rural area outside Paris, partly to save money. Sisley painted only landscapes, and maintained his clear, brilliant style and rapid Impressionist technique throughout his career.
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 77.412
French, 1839–1899
Apple Trees in Flower, 1880
Oil on canvas
The brief period that thisa pple orchard stood in blossom provided the French Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley with one of the most spectacular sights in the country. He lived in a rural area outside Paris, partly to save money. Sisley painted only landscapes, and maintained his clear, brilliant style and rapid Impressionist technique throughout his career.
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 77.412
Published References
George Besson. _Sisley_. Paris: Braun. 1946. Plate 43.
François Daulte. _Alfred Sisley_. Lausanne. 1959. No. 355.
Chrysler Museum. _Selections from the Permanent Collection: The Chrysler Museum_. Norfolk, VA: Chrysler Museum of Art. 1982: 62.
Jefferson C. Harrison. _French Paintings from the Chrysler Museum_. Norfolk, VA: The Chrysler Museum, 1986, No. 37, 73-74; Color Plate 37, 131.
Jefferson C. Harrison. _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_. Norfolk, VA: The Chrysler Museum, 1991, No. 111, 140; Color ill. 140.
Jeff Harrison, _Collecting with Vision: Treasures From the Chrysler Museum of Art_ (London: D. Giles Ltd., 2007), 46, fig. 44. ISBN: 978-0-940744-72-1
Provenance
The artist, until 1882; Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, 1882-1893; H. Vever, Paris; Vever sale, Georges Petit, Paris, Feb. 1-2, 1897; Berhend, Paris; Alfred Daber, Paris; Wildenstein and Co., Paris and New York; private collection, Switzerland; M. Knoedler and Co., New York; Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.; Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. to the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, 1977.
Catalogue EntryAlfred Sisley
French, 1839-1899
Apple Trees in Flower, 1880
Oil on canvas, 25¼" x 31¾" (64.1 x 80.6 cm)
Signed lower left: _Sisley._
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 77.412
References: François Daulte, _Alfred Sisley_, Lausanne, 1959, no. 355; Harrison, _CM_, 1986, no. 37.
Though celebrated today as one of the earliest and most creative of the Impressionists, the landscapist Sisley enjoyed no such recognition during his lifetime. From the early 1870s, when he began to paint professionally, until his death in 1899, he practiced his art in poverty and obscurity, struggling in vain against a hostile public and indifferent press.
A Parisian by birth, Sisley entered the atelier of Charles Gleyre (no. 100) in 1862 and there befriended fellow students Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille and Renoir (no. 113). Within months the four young artists had departed from Gleyre's studio for Chailly-en-Bière and the nearby Fontainebleau Forest. There, through their communal experiments with _plein-air_ painting, they sowed the first seeds of Impressionism, and by 1870 Sisley's landscapes had begun to exhibit the clear, high-keyed tones and sketchy, broken color touches of the new style. Though his later landscapes displayed the formal disintegrations inherent in the Impressionist technique, Sisley remained committed to an art of compositional and spatial clarity, to architectonically structured landscapes and carefully calibrated perspectives.
Sisley spent most of his life working in the villages and countryside around Paris. Initially he lived in or near Louveciennes (1871-74), Marly-le-Roi (1875-77) and Sèvres (1877-79) and showed a special interest in river and snow scenes. In later years (1880-99) he resided near Fontainebleau in the hamlets of Veneux-Nadon and neighboring Moret, at the juncture of the Seine and Loing rivers, where he repeatedly painted the banks of these waterways and the adjacent fields.
Produced at the onset of his final Moret period, _Apple Trees in Flower_ of 1880 portrays the crisp, breezy weather of early spring, when the chill of winter still lingers on the land. Its forms merely summarized by Sisley's dappling, Impressionist brush, the landscape is brought into structural focus through the anchoring verticals of the blossoming fruit trees. The receding lines of the trees also create a sense of deep space, a characteristic feature of Sisley's art.
Sisley relished the challenge of capturing the transitory effects of light and weather and the fleeting magic of seasonal change. In an enthusiastic letter written from Moret in the spring of 1883, he reported:
The weather has been wonderful. I have started work again, but unfortunately, because it has been such a dry spring, the fruit trees are not flowering all at once, and the blossoms are dropping very quickly. And I am trying to paint them!
Jefferson C. Harrison. _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_. Norfolk, VA: The Chrysler Museum, 1991, No. 111, 140; Color ill. 140.
French, 1839-1899
Apple Trees in Flower, 1880
Oil on canvas, 25¼" x 31¾" (64.1 x 80.6 cm)
Signed lower left: _Sisley._
Gift of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 77.412
References: François Daulte, _Alfred Sisley_, Lausanne, 1959, no. 355; Harrison, _CM_, 1986, no. 37.
Though celebrated today as one of the earliest and most creative of the Impressionists, the landscapist Sisley enjoyed no such recognition during his lifetime. From the early 1870s, when he began to paint professionally, until his death in 1899, he practiced his art in poverty and obscurity, struggling in vain against a hostile public and indifferent press.
A Parisian by birth, Sisley entered the atelier of Charles Gleyre (no. 100) in 1862 and there befriended fellow students Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille and Renoir (no. 113). Within months the four young artists had departed from Gleyre's studio for Chailly-en-Bière and the nearby Fontainebleau Forest. There, through their communal experiments with _plein-air_ painting, they sowed the first seeds of Impressionism, and by 1870 Sisley's landscapes had begun to exhibit the clear, high-keyed tones and sketchy, broken color touches of the new style. Though his later landscapes displayed the formal disintegrations inherent in the Impressionist technique, Sisley remained committed to an art of compositional and spatial clarity, to architectonically structured landscapes and carefully calibrated perspectives.
Sisley spent most of his life working in the villages and countryside around Paris. Initially he lived in or near Louveciennes (1871-74), Marly-le-Roi (1875-77) and Sèvres (1877-79) and showed a special interest in river and snow scenes. In later years (1880-99) he resided near Fontainebleau in the hamlets of Veneux-Nadon and neighboring Moret, at the juncture of the Seine and Loing rivers, where he repeatedly painted the banks of these waterways and the adjacent fields.
Produced at the onset of his final Moret period, _Apple Trees in Flower_ of 1880 portrays the crisp, breezy weather of early spring, when the chill of winter still lingers on the land. Its forms merely summarized by Sisley's dappling, Impressionist brush, the landscape is brought into structural focus through the anchoring verticals of the blossoming fruit trees. The receding lines of the trees also create a sense of deep space, a characteristic feature of Sisley's art.
Sisley relished the challenge of capturing the transitory effects of light and weather and the fleeting magic of seasonal change. In an enthusiastic letter written from Moret in the spring of 1883, he reported:
The weather has been wonderful. I have started work again, but unfortunately, because it has been such a dry spring, the fruit trees are not flowering all at once, and the blossoms are dropping very quickly. And I am trying to paint them!
Jefferson C. Harrison. _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_. Norfolk, VA: The Chrysler Museum, 1991, No. 111, 140; Color ill. 140.