Henri Le Sidaner

Henri Le Sidaner (Port Louis 1862 - Paris 1939) "The Vasque in the Moonlight, Stresa" oil on canvas Width cm. 115 height cm. 87 – Exhibited: in 1909 in Paris at the S.N.B.A. n. 782; in 1912 in Pittsburg, Carnegie Institute; in 1970 in Chicago, Galerie Maurice Sternberg n. 10 The vasque au claire de lune is one of six paintings by Henri Le Sidaner made during his stay on Lake Maggiore in 1909; each of them, including L’île mère currently in the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, is a window on the lake (cf. Farindeaux-Le Sidaner nos. 245-250). These paintings were exhibited at the 1909 Salon, where the contemporary critic Camille Mauclair notes that 'this time Le Sidaner took from Lake Maggiore the themes for his music of nuances, which rises gradually from shadow to sunlight. He produced three moonlight sonatas and three twilight versions of the Borromean Islands sculpted in the gold of the dying sun (cited in Farinaux-Le Sidaner, op. cit., p. 33). The present work, which represents a basin rich in flowers against the mottled waters of the lake illuminated by the moon, is one of the moonlight sonatas. The application of musical terminology to painting was an important concept for Le Sidaner, who would later explain, using this series of paintings as a reference, that: there is an analogy between sounds and colors as between corresponding values. The proximity between them appeared ever clearer to me at twilight on the shores of Lake Maggiore, in a light softened by the disappearance of the last rays of the sun; the tranquil chimes of the bells in the churches on the opposite side of the lake seemed to merge and grow with the same reflection of the churches in the sky at dusk, of the blurred areas of light in the water. (Le Sidaner, in De la lumiére et de la couleur, 1935, quoted in Farineax-Le Sidaner, op. cit. p.116) Bibliography: Yann Farinaux-Le Sidaner: Le Sidaner, L’ oeuvre peint et grave, Paris, 1989, n.246, reproduced on page 116