Biography from Anderson Galleries, Inc.:
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Historians have frequently described Le Sidaner's work in terms of
musicality and silence. Always in a 'minor key,' its subtle
harmonies are seen to evoke a wistful mood that is intensified, as Paul
Signac notes, by the absence of figures: "His oeuvre displays a taste
for tender, soft and silent atmospheres. Gradually, he even went so far
as to eliminate all human presence from his pictures, as if he feared
that the slightest human form might disturb their muffled silence" (Y.
Farinaux- Le Sidaner, op cit., p. 31).
Many of his works including Canal a Annecy
demonstrate beautiful solitude such as a lone swan drifting along a
canal framed by flowering trees. The stillness of the gliding
swan, the absence of figures, and quiet surroundings reinforce the
poetic tranquility of the canal scene. Le Sidaner's signature
rich brushwork creates a lovely impasto of textured stones, lush
flowers, and rippling water. The town of Annecy is a beautiful
lakeside village in the Haute Savoie region of France. Its
picturesque canals are lined with ancient buildings and flowering tress
and are the home to a bevy of white swans. Various French artists
have visited and painted Annecy, including Le Sidaner (who painted two
works here in 1936) and Paul Cezanne.
After spending the first
years of his life in the West Indies, Henri Le Sidaner returned to
France with his family in 1872. He began art studies in 1877 with
the history painter Alexandre Desmit in Dunkerque, and in 1882 entered
Alexandre Cabanel's atelier at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
From 1882 to 1893, Le Sidaner often retreated to Etaples. The stern
coastal landscape of the northern town appealed to the young artist,
who suffered under the Ecole's dictum of copying pictures in the
Louvre. Le Sidaner explained that "Etaples-that is to say,
Nature-revived me," and that city provided many themes for his
plein-air works.
Le Sidaner began exhibiting at the Salon des
Artistes Francais in 1887. His naturalistic figural groups set in
Etaples were well received and won him trips to Italy and Holland in
1891. Three years later, he exhibited Impressionists works
influenced by Monet at the less conservative Societe Nationale des
Beaux-Arts. From around 1896 to the end of the century, Le
Sidaner painted Symbolist themes where pensive, virginal women dressed
in white inhabit dimly-lit gardens. In these paintings, which
recall the early canvases of his friend Henri Martin, Le Sidaner
initiated the aura of mystery and the divisionist technique
characteristic of his late work.
After the turn of the century,
Le Sidaner rarely portrayed the human figure. Instead, he
depicted provincial setting in Bruges, Beauvais, and Chartres and urban
areas such as London and Venice. Images of the gardens and
interior of his home in Gerberoy, where he resided from 1901 or 1902,
also are prevalent in later works. He did, however, often imply
human presence in a set table or an open book, adding to the intimate
yet mysterious quality of his painting.
Like his close friends
Henri Martin and Ernest Laurent, Le Sidaner was associated with
Neo-Impressionism only tenuously and tempered its techniques with an
otherwise traditional approach. He enjoyed continued favor and
from 1897 was regularly honored by solo shows not only in Paris, but
also in London, Brussels, and the United States. In 1930 he was made a
professor at the Academie des Beaux-Arts, replacing Ernest Laurent, and
was named its president in 1937.
Museum Collections Include:
Phillips
Collection, Washington, D.C.; Detroit Institute of the Arts, Michigan; Musee
d'Art Modern, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Rome; Nelson Atkins Museum,
Kansas City; Ashmolean Musem, Oxford, England; Phoenix Art Musem,
Phoenix; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; The Tate Collection,
England
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