Evian-les-Bains (Haute-Savoie). Henri Martin (1860-1943) and Henri Le Sidaner (1862-1939) are representatives of the “last impressionists”, figures of a “intimate movement that dominated the Belle Époque”, according to Yann Farinaux-Le Sidaner. The scientific curator of this exhibition, which puts the works of these two painters into perspective at the Palais Lumière, wrote the catalogue with Marie-Anne Destrebecq. This statement by Martin is quoted there: “Our natures were a little different, but our visions of art were parallel.” “Henri Martin is very shy, underlines Yann Farinaux-Le Sidaner, rough, pugnacious, and Le Sidaner is very reserved without being shy and expresses himself with infinite distinction. Martin le Toulousain excelled in his studies – he was a student of Jean-Paul Laurens – and exhibited very quickly at the Salon. Le Sidaner, born in Mauritius, grew up in Dunkirk and, after his time in the studio of Alexandre Cabanel and at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, joined the colony of painters in Étaples, in the north of France. They met in 1891 and their friendship would last forever.
Two types of light
One will remain faithful to the frank light of the South when the other will adopt the broken tones of the North. While Martin expresses himself with parallel fragmented touches bringing him closer to neo-impressionism, Le Sidaner maintains an impressionist style. Both experience a period marked by symbolism, more pronounced in Martin. He describes his painting thus: Flower of Evil (1890), inspired by Baudelaire: “A blonde woman […] shows with one hand an ideal flower, and with the other, raised in the same position, she hides in her hair large flowers with funereal powers. […] The mouth has a smile that I would like to be devilish.“In 1900, his Beauty wins a gold medal at the World’s Fair while On Sunday de Le Sidaner, a gathering of young women in white imagined after a poem by Max Elskamp, won a bronze medal. Perhaps Martin remembered his friend’s composition in his Sketch for the Champs-Élysées (around 1939)…
Henri Martin (1860-1943), Study for Summerbefore 1914, oil on canvas, collection of the Grenoble Museum.
© Grenoble Museum
The landscape at Le Sidaner, the sets of Martin
Le Sidaner’s true genre is landscape. After Venice in the 1890s, he left for Bruges in 1899. He stayed there for a year and seems to have integrated into his art the image of “Bruges-la-Morte”, the title of the famous symbolist novel by Georges Rodenbach. Little by little, the figure disappears from his paintings. Even Fountain (1904), painted in Paris, only reveals indistinct silhouettes. La Treille, Lake Maggiore (1909) is, writes Camille Mauclair, a “music of nuances that gradually rises from shadow to sun.” The palette lightened over time, no doubt under the influence of stays in the South (Sun in the house, Villefranche-sur-Mer1925). The House under the Snow (1936), painted in Versailles where the Le Sidaner family now has its main residence, with its delicate colours, is a far cry from the dirty whites and browns that reigned in The Place, snow from 1902. This work represented Gerberoy, the village in the Oise where the Sidaners enjoyed a wide view and a garden that would occupy the artist until the end of his days. It was there that most of the famous tables were painted, still set up in front of the house, waiting for the day’s visitors.
Henri Martin also had his Garden of Eden. In Labastide-du-Vert, in the Lot, The bridge (circa 1910) takes on warm hues under the sun and The Terrace in the Rain (circa 1930) is illuminated by the reflection of puddles, the white of oleander boxes and the vermilion of geraniums. Combining the colours of Fauvism with his divided touch, the “painter of light”, as Louis Hourticq called it, constructed images of happiness that he often recycled in the great sets that made his glory. The sketches Summer (around 1905) and The Regains, summer (1910), probably tapestry cartoons, Harvest (1918) for the Council of State, or Vineyards in autumn (around 1927) for the prefecture of Cahors evoke a golden age. For the decoration of the town hall of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, he magnifies the world of work (The Courthouse Construction Sitearound 1914) and renews the theme with the decor for the Council of State (The Paverscirca 1925).
These painters of happiness became famous: Martin for his decorations, Le Sidaner as soon as he explored in his paintings what his great-grandson calls “the intermediate hours”. Today, they attract an audience eager to rediscover these intimate or joyful atmospheres. Presented in different cities in Japan between 2021 and 2023, the exhibition was a great success.
