Henri Le Sidaner (1862-1939)

Le Sidaner’s desire to find a way of painting detached from any particular school, led him to leave his studies at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts by 1885. In 1901, he took part in his first exhibition with the Société Nouvelle alongside artists such as Henri Martin and Edmond Aman-Jean. The exhibition was held at the prestigious Galerie Georges Petit, and due to the success of the show, the gallery continued to represent Le Sidaner holding numerous important exhibitions for the artist. By the 1920’s Le Sidaner was critically acclaimed and had succeeded in developing a unique style of painting, combining Impressionist ideas with his early symbolist influences. At the beginning of 1927, he painted a series of eight canvases, La Table, based on eight different colour harmonies which were exhibited with Galerie Georges Petit later that year. The exhibition was a great success, the artistic director of a leading art newspaper wrote rather poetically of them: ‘Here is Harmonie Jaune with shades of yellow flowers, the skin bitten with fruit, jewels and rays reminiscent of the splendours of the summer, since the dawn of the morning before, and Phebus sifting the earth of arrows of gold, until sunset to the vast purple clouds.’ (M. Fueillet, ‘Henri Le Sidaner, Pientre du silence’, in Le Gaulois Artistique, Paris, November 13, 1927.)