HENRI LEBASQUE | Paysage avec une meule

James Francis Trezza, New York
Joan M. Weiner (sold: Christie's, New York, 13th May 1999, lot 166)
Schiller & Bodo, New York
Judy Klotz, Abilene
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the early 1990s

Denise Bazetoux, Henri Lebasque, Catalogue raisonné, Paris, 2008, vol. I, no. 91, illustrated p. 75

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By 1900, the year the present work was painted, Henri Lebasque was an established figure on the Parisian art scene, closely affiliated with leading Nabi and Impressionist contemporary painters, including Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard. In 1894, he had visited Camille Pissarro and became a frequent guest at his home, profiting from the study of the elderly master's late Impressionist technique. Perhaps it was Pissarro’s depictions of haystacks, or indeed the celebrated series which Claude Monet painted in 1891 in neighbouring Giverny, that inspired the present work. Monet’s compositions are tightly framed, whereas Lebasque painted a more panoramic scene, giving the viewer a broad perspective of the terrain beyond. Nevertheless, he was clearly following in the footsteps of the Impressionist masters and building upon their celebrated motif. 

Lebasque's work at the turn of the century was also strongly influenced by his acquaintance with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, which resulted in his use of divisionist brushwork and colour theory. The swiftly applied brushstrokes and harmonious palette of the present work exemplifies Lebasque's mastery of these new techniques, which he uses to create a scene of atmospheric tranquility.

The dynamic brushwork of the present work and broad palette that includes purples, yellows and greens is typical of his luminous style. According to Lisa Banner: ‘[Lebasque] was hailed as the painter of "joy and light" by art critics and curators of the Louvre in his later life. But Lebasque's primary concerns were with simple expression of sensuous surface [...] which was replete with his personal delight in form and colour, heightened by his contact with fellow painters Pierre Matisse and Bonnard, but characteristically his own’ (Lisa Banner, Lebasque, 1865-1937 (exhibition catalogue), Montgomery Gallery, San Francisco, 1985, p. 20).