.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Henri Lebasque first visited the French Riviera in 1906 at the suggestion of his friend Henri Manguin. Mesmerized by the coast’s luxuriant scenery and unparalleled light, he visited regularly thereafter and eventually relocated there in Le Cannet in 1924. Recalling her father's work and his contentment living in the South of France, Marthe Lebasque later said: “He had a happy disposition, he was content in the middle of his family. He was happy about painting...He adored us forming a happy image. He felt that very strongly, and conveyed that image with such strength in his paintings” (quoted in L. Banner, Lebasque, exh. cat., Montgomery Gallery, San Francisco, 1986, p. 113).
Lebasque painted the present work while on holiday with his family in Sainte-Maxime, between Cannes and St. Tropez, during the summer of 1914. Their house that year—surrounded by luscious trees and overlooking the Mediterranean sea—provided the ideal setting for his celebrated terrace family portraits. According to art historian Lisa Banner, the present works is one of several paintings ''done in various shapes and sizes, of the same family group breakfasting on the terrace, with sunlight streaming in through the open arches" (in ibid., p. 21). The paintings from Lebasque’s Sainte-Maxime Terrasse series are considered amongst his "most important and formative works" (in ibid., pp. 18-19). She further makes light of a characteristically mysterious aspect in Lebasque's work, pointing out "the absence of detail in his portrayal of faces." According to her, Lebasque "achieves greater intimacy with his subjects thanks to this technique, leaving them the anonymity of disguise by careful omission of facial distinction and coaxing greater expression from the limbs and body poses of his sitters" (ibid., p. 18).
In the present composition, the five figures' dispositions are conveyed more through their physical attitudes than their miens. The two children are seen mainly in profile, and three others wear sun hats which further mask their facial expressions. Though their faces are largely obscured, the angles of the figures' heads, emphasized by the slants of their bonnets, create an intimate play of regards. The seated woman at right fixes intently on the pink-clad child, whose rhyming dress and tilted head tend toward the central seated figure. Her downward gaze in turn draws us to the ascendant woman in red, looking finally to the nude child at left—who, according to Banner, was added for "compositional balance" (ibid., p. 43).
By choreographing this subtle dance of gazes, the artist invites the spectator into the close circle of his family. Though the scene takes place outdoors, under the dappled light of the French Riviera, Lebasque achieves an intimacy that rivals the interior domesticity of his contemporaries Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard. The centerpiece at The Carnegie Institute's International Exhibition in both 1926 and 1935, the present painting is a masterful example of Lebasque's formative serial works.
Lebasque painted the present work while on holiday with his family in Sainte-Maxime, between Cannes and St. Tropez, during the summer of 1914. Their house that year—surrounded by luscious trees and overlooking the Mediterranean sea—provided the ideal setting for his celebrated terrace family portraits. According to art historian Lisa Banner, the present works is one of several paintings ''done in various shapes and sizes, of the same family group breakfasting on the terrace, with sunlight streaming in through the open arches" (in ibid., p. 21). The paintings from Lebasque’s Sainte-Maxime Terrasse series are considered amongst his "most important and formative works" (in ibid., pp. 18-19). She further makes light of a characteristically mysterious aspect in Lebasque's work, pointing out "the absence of detail in his portrayal of faces." According to her, Lebasque "achieves greater intimacy with his subjects thanks to this technique, leaving them the anonymity of disguise by careful omission of facial distinction and coaxing greater expression from the limbs and body poses of his sitters" (ibid., p. 18).
In the present composition, the five figures' dispositions are conveyed more through their physical attitudes than their miens. The two children are seen mainly in profile, and three others wear sun hats which further mask their facial expressions. Though their faces are largely obscured, the angles of the figures' heads, emphasized by the slants of their bonnets, create an intimate play of regards. The seated woman at right fixes intently on the pink-clad child, whose rhyming dress and tilted head tend toward the central seated figure. Her downward gaze in turn draws us to the ascendant woman in red, looking finally to the nude child at left—who, according to Banner, was added for "compositional balance" (ibid., p. 43).
By choreographing this subtle dance of gazes, the artist invites the spectator into the close circle of his family. Though the scene takes place outdoors, under the dappled light of the French Riviera, Lebasque achieves an intimacy that rivals the interior domesticity of his contemporaries Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard. The centerpiece at The Carnegie Institute's International Exhibition in both 1926 and 1935, the present painting is a masterful example of Lebasque's formative serial works.