Henri le Sidaner

Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, Salle Le Sidaner, 1921, no. 194

Yann Farinaux-Le Sidaner, Le Sidaner, L’œuvre peint et gravé, Milan, 1989, no. 431, illustrated p. 172

Henri Le Sidaner’s work of the early 1920s is universally considered to be the peak of his long and distinguished career. La Table De Pierre embodies the strikingly luminous quality so unique to the artist, and the harmonious use of colour, light and divided brushwork, convey a sense of intimacy that draws the viewer into the moment at hand. Le Sidaner developed his distinctive idiom during the 1890s, under the influence of Symbolism. The poignant fin-de-siècle mood of Maeterlinck and Verhaeren, of Lévy-Dhurmer and Khnopff set the tone of his œuvre. On a formal level, he found a suitably harmonious, all-over treatment for his compositions in Neo-Impressionism.

The home and gardens Le Sidaner created at Gerberoy from 1901 onwards provided his most enduring theme. He was extremely fond of table-settings as a subject matter and he played with different arrangements of glasses, drink, fruits and other tableware to create the desired effect. His first major composition of a table setting for three, La Table,  in his shady courtyard, dates from the year of his arrival in the picturesque village (fig. 1). The domestic intimacy and muted joy summoned up by his depiction of leafy vines, fruit and colourful ceramics in the present work bear out Maurice Hamburger’s judgement that ‘Le Sidaner has sensed that beauty, like happiness, consists above all in inner harmony, calm and simplicity’ (Le Soir, 1930).

comp: 419d06008_comp   Fig. 1, Henri Le Sidaner, La Table, 1901, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris