Le Port

In the present work, Le Sidaner has captured the port of Le Croisic at dusk, the fleeting moment before the sun has extinguished its light for the day. A lone fisherman, a rare appearance of a figure in Le Sidaner’s work, hurries to finish work on his boat before he loses the light. This transitory time of day was a favorite for Le Sidaner, allowing the artist to play with color and light, dappling the effects with nimble brushstrokes across the canvas. Le Sidaner painted at least eleven canvases of the port during his stay in Le Croisic in the summer of 1923. Each one is painted from a different vantage point and at different times of day, including the early morning sun as seen in Port du Croisic, Matinée d’été (fig. 1). Le Sidaner also varied his brushstrokes, as can be seen in comparing the highly keyed palette of the present work with Port du Croisic, Matinée d’été which features softer and wider strokes to the sky.
Jacques Baschet wrote of Le Sidaner’s style in his newspaper, L’Illustration in 1924 “He is a pointillist, but not the kind who decomposes tones and applies them unmixed, thereby letting our eyes reconstitute the colors on our retina. His palette is extremely varied and subtle. The oils bind and melt together in highly delicate harmonies. Nor is he the kind to enclose forms within a heavy brushstroke, as is the practice among the younger school of painters. With him, contours seem to emerge from the interplay of light, and in this respect, he is similar to Claude Monet” (quoted in Y. Farinaux-Le Sidaner, op. cit., p. 37).
(fig. 1) Henri Le Sidaner, Port du Croisic, Matinée d’été, 1923. Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva.