Henri Le Sidaner (French, 1862-1939) Maison au clair de lune, Gerberoy, c. 1902 oil on canvas signed Le Sidaner (lower left) 16 ¼ x 12 ¾ inches. This lot is accompanied by a photo-certificate signed by Louis Le Sidaner, the artist's son. Provenance: Galleries Maurice Sternberg, Chicago Acquired directly from the above, by 1970 Literature: Yann Farinaux-Le Sidnaer, Le Sidaner: L'Oeuvre Peint et Grave, Paris, 1989, no. 901, p. 312, illus. Property from the Miriam B. Swanson Trust, Chicago, Illinois Lot essay: The twilit gardens and hushed city scenes of Henri Le Sidaner’s artworks conjure a seductive, mysterious world. Throughout his career, Le Sidaner remained chiefly concerned with capturing atmospheric light and favored a subdued use of color, preferring nuanced greys and opals applied with uneven, dappled brushstrokes. Le Sidaner developed his distinctive lexicon during the 1890s, under the influence of Symbolism. On a formal level, he found a suitably harmonious, all-over treatment for his compositions in Impressionism. This dual aspect of his art was touched on by the critic, and his supporter, Camille Mauclair who wrote: "born out of Impressionism, [Le Sidaner] is as much the son of Verlaine than of the snowscenes of Monet" (C. Mauclair, Henri Le Sidaner, Paris, 1928, p. 12). Born in 1862 in Mauritius, to Breton parents, in 1872 Le Sidaner’s family settled in Dunkirk, France. In 1882 he left for Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts under Alexandre Cabanel. However, Le Sidaner shortly after left because of artistic differences. He relocated to the Ètaples artist colony, which had a tradition of en plain air painting established by Charles-François Daubigny and of the local Deauville painter Eugène Boudin, a leading Post-Impressionist. In the late nineteenth-century numerous artists were drawn by the sand dunes, the atmospheric light and the remnants of an older France. Keen to buy a rural home where he could create a garden and work in reflective solitude, Le Sidaner purchased a property in 1904 at Gerberoy in the Picardy countryside. Once at Gerberoy, the artist rarely depicted figures again, preferring to create enigmatic moods through clues that imply human presence. He also continued to try to capture the luminosity of dusk and evening, as seen in Maison au clair de lune, Gerberoy, c. 1902. The hushed quietude of this painting is created by the subtle interplay of the warm moonlight glow against the cottage’s façade with the dark night beyond. A light from a single window is seen, the only indication of the home’s occupation.