Friday, December 14, 2018

Personal Intimate Sentimentalism of Henri Le Sidaner

Henri Le Sidaner
Beguinage - Maisons à contre jour, Bruges
1899
oil on canvas
Dundee Art Galleries and Museums Collection, Scotland

Henri Le Sidaner
Canal in Autumn (Grisors)
1913
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art

Henri Le Sidaner
Nemours, Seine-et-Marne, France
before 1935
oil on canvas
Museums Sheffield, South Yorkshire

Henri Le Sidaner
Red Houses, Bruges
before 1939
oil on canvas
Paisley Art Institute Collection, Scotland

"Like other species, artists club together in movements not just for purposes of identification but for longevity.  Individuals who don't belong to schools take longer establishing reputations during their lifetimes, and tend to lose them sooner after their deaths.  Henri Le Sidaner (1862-1939) was one such individual: a contemporary of the Post-Impressionists who painted in dots but was not a Pointillist; revelled in complementary colours but was not a Fauve; and drew a veil of dreams over reality but was not a Symbolist, or only briefly.  He was, as his friend the critic Gabriel Mourey described him, 'a sort of mystic who has no faith.'  When asked what school he belonged to, his own reply was: 'None. But if you absolutely insist on categorising me, I am an intimist.'

" . . . Le Sidaner's trademark motif of a single window lit at dusk reminds one of nothing so much as an Advent calendar on the first day of December.  He is the master of the penumbra, the 'crepuscule' of velvety darkness so soft and thick you could almost touch it, illuminated by a 'clair de lune'  . . .  His palette was anathema to the Pointillists.  If, as Signac insisted, 'the enemy of all paintings is grey,' then Le Sidaner slept with the enemy all his painting life.  It wasn't that he didn't do colour, but that his colours are always diffused in an opal light that falls through the picture space like soft rain.  . . .  'You could blow on this crepuscular vision and it would vanish' the critic of Le Figaro commented on one of his works.  The vision has proved more durable than it looked."

– Laura Gascoigne, extracts from her review of a French exhibition devoted to Le Sidaner (The Spectator, May 10, 2014)

Henri Le Sidaner
The Bridge
1904
oil on canvas
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Henri Le Sidaner
Le Gouter au Jardin
1903
oil on canvas
Ulster Museum, Belfast

Henri Le Sidaner
Grand Trianon
ca. 1905
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Henri Le Sidaner
Une Ruelle, la Nuit
before 1925
oil on canvas
Leeds Art Gallery, West Yorkshire

Henri Le Sidaner
Trafalgar Square
before 1931
pastel on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Henri Le Sidaner
Courtyard from a Window
ca. 1904-1910
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Henri Le Sidaner
Church Street, Villefranches-sur-Mer
ca. 1928
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Henri Le Sidaner
An Italian Lake
before 1933
oil on board
Kirklees Museums and Galleries, West Yorkshire

Henri Le Sidaner
The Pond Garden, Hampton Court
before 1939
oil on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Henri Le Sidaner
La Ronde
1897
lithograph on blue paper
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC