Sisley was born in Paris at 19 Rue des Trois-Bornes on October 30, 1839 to English merchant parents, established in the French capital. His father, William Sisley (1799-1879), of French origin, ran an import business related to the family business based in London. His mother, Felicia Sell (1808-1866), was drawn to music and social life.

He was baptized on October 31, 1840 by Pastor Athanase Coquerel in the Reformed Church of Paris, presumably in the Protestant temple of the Louvre Oratory.

In 1857, his parents sent him to London, at the age of eighteen, to be assigned to a commercial career. During these years of apprenticeship (1857-1860), he spent more time visiting museums than in his commercial training, and particularly admired the works of Constable and Turner. Returning to France in 1860, he obtained his parents' permission to abandon the business and dedicate himself to art.

In October 1862 he entered the studio of Charles Gleyre, professor at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. He entered the practice of drawing and met Renoir, Monet and Bazille. Very soon, they become friends. Gleyre's landscape design differs too much from his perception and the four friends leave the master's studio in March 1863 to work outdoors and plant their easels in the Fontainebleau forest in Chailly-en Beer, Barbizon or Marlotte, which takes him closer to Marlotte's group. This first experiment in group work, renewed in particular in July 1865, united the four artists, stimulated them and announced, in the same year in which the first Salon des refusés was inaugurated, their next battle for the new impressionist painting. His landscape painting is influenced by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and Charles-François Daubigny.

Sisley was eminently a landscape painter, who distinguished himself from his impressionist colleagues by the decisive intervention in his paintings of the most imponderable elements: water, snow, sky, fog, in such a way that he has been considered, along with Monet , as one of the purest impressionists. Between 1872 and 1880 he produced the best of his production: landscapes of great spontaneity around Paris, Marly, Louveciennes, Bougival, Sèvres, Saint-Cloud and Meudon. Sunny landscapes that contrast with its famous Marly floods, in which it does not also lose its intimate and poetic connotation.

Sisley is now considered the impressionist himself: the essence of his inspiration is the landscape. The figures in his paintings are only silhouettes; Furthermore, portraits of his close relatives (wife and children) and the few still lifes are rare.