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拍品专文
An ode to symbolist ideology and a model of Neo-Impressionist execution, Le Sidaner’s Barques blanches au clair de lune exemplifies the artist’s ability to construct “symbolically charged, atmospheric images with veiled views of the town in the dreamy stillness of twilight” (I. Mössinger and K. Sagner, Henri Le Sidaner, Chemnitz, 2009, p. 39).
Anchored fishing boats beckon to a single beacon of light originating from a façade along the canal. Denoted by planar, fragmented brushwork, the colored light seamlessly hops across the rippled waters under the hazy dusk of day’s end. The light source suggests the possibility of a human presence in a scene devoid of figural representation. The stillness and dreamy silence of what Camille Mauclair coined as “Le Sidaner’s time” elicits a sense of dream-like nostalgia and sentimental realism over the dissolving forms.
Often compared to Claude Monet for his portrayal of light through the manipulation of color, Le Sidaner differed from the older generation of Impressionists in that he rarely painted outdoors. Le Sidaner would quickly sketch the scenes he observed as he walked through the maritime town, later crafting the compositions from his imagination. Painted from memory, Barques blanches au clair de lune is an intimate manifestation of the artist’s psyche. Le Sidaner breached a new realm of symbolist rhetoric through his “musical quality of colour” (ibid., p. 66) and “taste for tender, soft and silent atmospheres” (Y. Farinaux-Le Sidaner, op. cit., p. 31).
At roughly the same time as this painting’s creation in 1927, the art critic Pierre Troyon remarked on Le Sidaner’s adherence to idealistic impartiality, stating, “there is scarcely another oeuvre that is so liberated of literary, anecdotal elements and traditional ideas [and] far from any polemics or world view” (I. Mössinger and K. Sagner, op. cit., p. 178). In the present work, Le Sidaner chose to re-create memories of a small seaside harbor unspoiled by the sprawl of modern industrialization which had swept across Europe. In this idyllic seascape, the only disturbance amidst the quiet port is the combat for authority between light and water.
Anchored fishing boats beckon to a single beacon of light originating from a façade along the canal. Denoted by planar, fragmented brushwork, the colored light seamlessly hops across the rippled waters under the hazy dusk of day’s end. The light source suggests the possibility of a human presence in a scene devoid of figural representation. The stillness and dreamy silence of what Camille Mauclair coined as “Le Sidaner’s time” elicits a sense of dream-like nostalgia and sentimental realism over the dissolving forms.
Often compared to Claude Monet for his portrayal of light through the manipulation of color, Le Sidaner differed from the older generation of Impressionists in that he rarely painted outdoors. Le Sidaner would quickly sketch the scenes he observed as he walked through the maritime town, later crafting the compositions from his imagination. Painted from memory, Barques blanches au clair de lune is an intimate manifestation of the artist’s psyche. Le Sidaner breached a new realm of symbolist rhetoric through his “musical quality of colour” (ibid., p. 66) and “taste for tender, soft and silent atmospheres” (Y. Farinaux-Le Sidaner, op. cit., p. 31).
At roughly the same time as this painting’s creation in 1927, the art critic Pierre Troyon remarked on Le Sidaner’s adherence to idealistic impartiality, stating, “there is scarcely another oeuvre that is so liberated of literary, anecdotal elements and traditional ideas [and] far from any polemics or world view” (I. Mössinger and K. Sagner, op. cit., p. 178). In the present work, Le Sidaner chose to re-create memories of a small seaside harbor unspoiled by the sprawl of modern industrialization which had swept across Europe. In this idyllic seascape, the only disturbance amidst the quiet port is the combat for authority between light and water.