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 |