Henri Le Sidaner first visited the charming village of Gerberoy in Northern France in March 1901 where he was immediately struck by its quiet beauty and gently nostalgic air. A sensitive painter of gardens and the shifting patterns of natural light on stonework, Le Sidaner eventually acquired a cottage there in 1904 which he gradually landscaped and modified, its various aspects and vistas reappearing throughout his work over the subsequent years in some of his most memorable canvases. One such piece, the present work belongs to a series of paintings of La Maison sous l’Eglise, across which Le Sidaner’s preoccupation with the effects of subtle changes in light, colour and atmosphere are particularly evident.

Executed in a careful profusion of uneven, modulated brushstrokes, the surface of La Maison sous L’Eglise, Neige glows with all the atmospheric qualities of a soft winter light. While adopting certain Pointillist techniques, Le Sidaner maintained a fluidity with the application of his oils, blending and harmonising colour and light effects in what the critic Louis Vauxcelles aptly described as his ‘evanescent impressionism’ (Vauxcelles, L’Excelsior, 1919, cited in Yann Farinaux, Le Sidaner: L’oeuvre Peint et Gravé, Milan, 1989, p. 37). Delighting in the reflective qualities of the snow and softly diffused winter light here, Le Sidaner generates a striking luminosity in La Maison sous L’Eglise, the muted colours of the foreground balanced by the dazzling brilliance of concentrated dashes of blues, rose pinks and deep yellows thrown off from the church by the setting sun and the sky behind. As his son Rémy later recalled, while Le Sidaner was a keen observer of all light, he was particularly drawn to the blending of daylight and evening around sunset, so much so that Camille Mauclair christened the precise moment ‘Le Sidaner’s time’ (Rémy Le Sidaner, in ibid, p. 9).

Executed in 1931, Le Sidaner kept the present work in his own collection until 1937, when it was included in his solo exhibition at the Buffa Gallery in New York. After returning from the United States, Le Sidaner reworked the canvas to its current composition before it was included in the renowned Charpentier Gallery’s final and historic exhibition of his work.