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拍品專文
Bathed in the serene light of an early summer afternoon, an abundance of lush greenery surrounds the scene of a stone garden table, upon which rest the remnants of an elegant lunch for two – a pair of half empty glasses of wine, bowls of red fruits, and a coffee pot. In the background, the ivy-lined façade of a country house appears almost to blend with the green leaves of the trees and plants. Painted in 1917, La table de pierre is a prime example from one of the artist's most celebrated series of works. These paintings depict the garden table in Le Sidaner’s home at Gerberoy, a scene Le Sidaner concentrated on almost exclusively for years, until well into the 1920s. Having searched for a country abode to serve as a summer residence, he had followed the suggestion of his friend, the ceramist Auguste Delaherche, and settled in the medieval village of Gerberoy in 1901. Situated sixty-five miles northwest of Paris, on the border between Picardy and Normandy, Gerberoy was notable for its quaint blend of brick framed, timber homes and cobbled streets. At the time of Le Sidaner’s first visit, the village's residents numbered at around two hundred and fifty. This proved to be the ideal, tranquil setting for the artist, who had grown disillusioned with the faster-paced urban lifestyle of larger cities.
Soon after moving in, the artist embarked upon a large-scale renovation of the buildings and grounds. Similar to the landscaping projects of Claude Monet's magnificent gardens at Giverny - which had also provided the artist with seemingly limitless inspiration - Le Sidaner planned to design a home that would also serve as a setting for his paintings. He devoted his energies to enlarging the buildings, controlling all design aspects himself. Included in these works was the refurbishment of the main house, as well as the construction of a pavilion, a studio barn, and, upon the foundation of a medieval tower, a temple all’antica. The renovation of the gardens was planned meticulously, particularly in the case of the courtyard, in order to achieve the intended goal of creating harmony between architecture of the house and the nature and vegetation surrounding it. The completed buildings and gardens provided the artist with a wealth of inspiration and a crucial source of new subject matter. Like Monet at Giverny, Le Sidaner’s art became inextricably linked with his house and gardens at Gerberoy.
A pupil of the academic painter Alexandre Cabanel, whose reactionary teachings he would refute in favour of more modern views, Le Sidaner developed his distinctive lexicon during the 1890s, under the influence of Neo-Impressionism and Symbolism. Though formally inspired by the French Neo-Impressionist colour theory developed by Georges Seurat and his peers, the tone of Le Sidaner's œuvre was imbued with the poignant fin-de-siècle mood of the Belgian Symbolist artists, such as Maurice Maeterlinck, Emile Verhaeren, and Fernand Khnopff. The critic Camille Mauclair, a friend and supporter of the artist, noted this duality in Le Sidaner’s art, and in 1901 wrote ‘born out of Impressionism, [Le Sidaner] is as much the son of Verlaine as of the snow scenes of Monet.’ This sense of gentle poetry, the light palette of fresh tones, the subtle contrasts, and the painterly application of pigment are perfectly exemplified by La table de pierre. Great care has been taken in the composition of objects precisely arranged on the table, and splashes of bright colours brighten the refined palette of the composition, whose green tones are balanced out by luminous strokes of blue, red, and pink pigments. Although the scene lacks any figures, a distinctive trait of Le Sidaner’s work, human presence is revealed by the objects on the table, as well as the foreshortened chair in the immediate foreground, which all suggest that someone was there just moments earlier. Commenting on this, Paul Signac characterised the artist’s entire career as a progression towards the elimination of human figures: ‘His œuvre displays a taste for tender, soft and silent atmospheres. Gradually, he even went so far as to eliminate all human presence from his pictures, as if he feared that the slightest human form might disturb their muffled silence’ (quoted in Y. Farinaux-Le Sidaner, Le Sidaner, L’œuvre peint et gravé, Paris, 1989, p. 31).
Soon after moving in, the artist embarked upon a large-scale renovation of the buildings and grounds. Similar to the landscaping projects of Claude Monet's magnificent gardens at Giverny - which had also provided the artist with seemingly limitless inspiration - Le Sidaner planned to design a home that would also serve as a setting for his paintings. He devoted his energies to enlarging the buildings, controlling all design aspects himself. Included in these works was the refurbishment of the main house, as well as the construction of a pavilion, a studio barn, and, upon the foundation of a medieval tower, a temple all’antica. The renovation of the gardens was planned meticulously, particularly in the case of the courtyard, in order to achieve the intended goal of creating harmony between architecture of the house and the nature and vegetation surrounding it. The completed buildings and gardens provided the artist with a wealth of inspiration and a crucial source of new subject matter. Like Monet at Giverny, Le Sidaner’s art became inextricably linked with his house and gardens at Gerberoy.
A pupil of the academic painter Alexandre Cabanel, whose reactionary teachings he would refute in favour of more modern views, Le Sidaner developed his distinctive lexicon during the 1890s, under the influence of Neo-Impressionism and Symbolism. Though formally inspired by the French Neo-Impressionist colour theory developed by Georges Seurat and his peers, the tone of Le Sidaner's œuvre was imbued with the poignant fin-de-siècle mood of the Belgian Symbolist artists, such as Maurice Maeterlinck, Emile Verhaeren, and Fernand Khnopff. The critic Camille Mauclair, a friend and supporter of the artist, noted this duality in Le Sidaner’s art, and in 1901 wrote ‘born out of Impressionism, [Le Sidaner] is as much the son of Verlaine as of the snow scenes of Monet.’ This sense of gentle poetry, the light palette of fresh tones, the subtle contrasts, and the painterly application of pigment are perfectly exemplified by La table de pierre. Great care has been taken in the composition of objects precisely arranged on the table, and splashes of bright colours brighten the refined palette of the composition, whose green tones are balanced out by luminous strokes of blue, red, and pink pigments. Although the scene lacks any figures, a distinctive trait of Le Sidaner’s work, human presence is revealed by the objects on the table, as well as the foreshortened chair in the immediate foreground, which all suggest that someone was there just moments earlier. Commenting on this, Paul Signac characterised the artist’s entire career as a progression towards the elimination of human figures: ‘His œuvre displays a taste for tender, soft and silent atmospheres. Gradually, he even went so far as to eliminate all human presence from his pictures, as if he feared that the slightest human form might disturb their muffled silence’ (quoted in Y. Farinaux-Le Sidaner, Le Sidaner, L’œuvre peint et gravé, Paris, 1989, p. 31).