After spending the first years of his life in the West Indies,
Henri Le Sidaner (French, 1862–1939) returned to France with his family in 1872. He began art studies in 1877 with history painter
Alexandre Desmit (French, 1812–1885) in Dunkerque, and, in 1882, entered
Alexandre Cabanel’s atelier at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. From 1882 to 1893, Le Sidaner often retreated to Etaples. The stern coastal landscape of the northern town appealed to the young artist, who suffered under the Ecole’s dictum of copying pictures in the Louvre. Le Sidaner explained that “Etaples—that is to say, nature—revived me,” and that city provided many themes for his en plein air works.
Le Sidaner began exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1887. His naturalistic figural groups set in Etaples were well received, and won him trips to Italy and Holland in 1891. Three years later, he exhibited Impressionist works influenced by
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) at the less conservative Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. From around 1896 to the end of the century, Le Sidaner painted symbolist themes in which pensive, virginal women dressed in white inhabit dimly-lit gardens. In these paintings, which recall the early canvases of his friend
Henri Martin (French, 1860–1943), Le Sidaner initiated the aura of mystery and the divisionist technique characteristic of his late work.
After the turn of the century, Le Sidaner rarely portrayed the human figure. Instead, he depicted the provincial setting of Bruges, Beauvais, and Chartres, as well as urban areas, such as London and Venice. Images of the gardens and interior of his home in Gerberoy, where he resided from 1901 or 1902, also are prevalent in later works. He did, however, often imply human presence in a set table or an open book, adding to the intimate yet mysterious quality of his paintings.
Like his close friends Martin and
Ernest Laurent (French, 1859–1929), Le Sidaner was associated with Neo-Impressionism only tenuously, and tempered its techniques with an otherwise traditional approach. He enjoyed continued favor, and from 1897 until his death, was regularly honored with solo shows, not only in Paris, but also in London, Brussels, and the United States. In 1930 he was made a professor at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, replacing Laurent, and, in 1937, was named its president.