Henri Le Sidaner

French, (1862-1939)

A contemporary of the Post-Impressionists, Henri Le Sidaner’s approach to painting is whole-heartedly unique. His technique was often close to Pointillism, but Le Sidaner did not share the Pointillists’ love of colour, preferring greys and opals to create mystery and atmosphere. Instead, he used Pointillist techniques to make the surfaces of his paintings shimmer and blur.

Since moving to the picturesque, hill-top village of Gerberoy in northern France in 1901, Le Sidaner’s seductive views of his gardens, with their recently vacated tables dappled in sunlight and overhung by roses, would cement his reputation as a unique and unclassifiable artist. Le Sidaner spent the summer months in Gerberory, but escaped the cold winter’s by travelling elsewhere in France. In 1914, he purchased a second home in Versailles, which quickly became his favorite residence.

In September of 1916, Le Sidaner would return to Gerberoy to spend a week enjoying the company of his close friend, the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren. Nominated for a nobel prize on six separate occasions and instrumental in the symbolist movement, Verhaeren was one of the leading exponents of French poetry and provided a constant source of support and inspiration for Le Sidaner in his early career. Whilst in Gerberoy with Verhaeren, Le Sidaner produced multiple studies of the small summer pavilion which he had constructed next to his rose garden. It was these studies which inspired Le Sidaner to create Evening Glow , upon his return to Versailles. The painting is a fusion of the artists’ Gerberoy pavilion with the canals and autumnal impressions of Versailles. Le Sidaner elongated the square pavilion into a rectangular shape in order to better integrate it with the composition of Evening Glow

Painted at the height of his career, Evening Glow is characteristic of Le Sidaner’s most verdant and richly textured compositions from the 1910s. The brightly lit window at the centre of the painting still animates the quiet scene, implying but not confirming human presence. The sense of understated mystery and gentle poetry that Le Sidaner has imbued this work with reveals the artist’s inheritance from his Symbolist-inspired early years and his friendship with Verhaeren; while the brighter and more intense elements of the palette, the subtly worked contrasts and the dappled application of pigment evokes his debt to Impressionism.

After completing Evening Glow , Le Sidaner likely showed the painting to Verhaeren in November, where they met for a final time before the poet’s tragic death in a train accident later in the month. Soon after, the painting was bought from the Galerie Georges Petit by the industrialist Louis Loucheur, a senior figure in the French government and avid art collector. A great supporter of Les Nabis (his portrait by Vuillard can still be seen in Lille), Loucheur was a highly discerning collector whose endorsement of Evening Glow is testament to its quality.

Rue de la Paix, Paris

Oil on Canvas

33 x 46 cms / 13" x 18"