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Lot Essay
Capturing Venice in all its atmospheric splendor, Henri Le Sidaner’s monumental La Sérénade, Venise pictures the Grand Canal with one of the city’s great landmarks, the Doge’s Palace, rising on the bank opposite. In the foreground a group of gondolas filled with figures are gathered to listen to a musical serenade. Cloaked in inky-blue shadows, they are illuminated by the multi-colored lamps that radiate from this nocturnal scene. Taking the place of the moon, these glowing orb-shaped lights multiply the glittering light effects in the scene.
Having first visited Venice in the early 1890s, Le Sidaner returned to the famed floating city in 1905. Perhaps in part inspired by the earlier retrospective exhibition of James McNeill Whistler at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, whose visions of Venice exerted an important influence on artists at this time, Le Sidaner arrived in the autumn of this year. This trip offered him a very different impression of the city than when he had first visited at the beginning of the 1890s. This time, the artist embraced the legendary atmospheric qualities of Venice—light reflections, fog, rain and sun—and was particularly drawn to depicting these ephemeral effects at night. “He shows the true Venice,” a critic described when a selection of works from his Venetian stay were shown in Paris in 1906, “the familiar Venice, Venice true to life and lost in a dream” (“Les Salon de 1906,” in La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1906, quoted in Henri Le Sidaner: A Magical Impressionist, exh. cat., Kunstammlungen Chemnitz, 2009, p. 43).
Finding that his Venice paintings were met with critical success, Le Sidaner returned again in the fall of 1906, and remained there with his family until February of the following year. He once again fell under the spell of the coloristic—as well as evocative—visual effects the city offered. It was during this stay that Le Sidaner and his wife, Camille, took evening gondola rides to enjoy the music played from an orchestra boat on the Grand Canal. It was these idyllic interludes that inspired the present work. The artist produced a number of sketches of the various elements of the scene, including a depiction of his wife, Camille, who appears as the seated female figure in the immediate foreground of the finished work (Farinaux-Le Sidaner, no. 967) (see Y. Farinaux-Le Sidaner, Henri Le Sidaner, Paysages intimes, Château de Saint-Rémy-en-l’Eau, 2013, p. 88). Le Sidaner had long been interested in the Symbolist equivalence between art and music. Here, he brings this to life, marrying the sounds of this evening entertainment with the vivid atmosphere and rich colors and light of Venice.
Le Sidaner’s Impressionistic views of Venice pre-date Claude Monet’s own series of Venetian views, which he painted during his first and only campaign in the city in the autumn of 1908. The artists' depictions of the canals and bridges, churches and palazzi have often drawn comparison, as both sought, in varying ways, to capture the famed effects of light and color. Though similar, Le Sidaner differed from his contemporary in his love of nocturnal scenes. In the present work, he has employed an Impressionist, and, in the dappled brushwork, a Pointillist, handling with which to capture the ceaseless sparkling lights reflecting on water, distilling something of the mysterious atmosphere of this magical city.
Having first visited Venice in the early 1890s, Le Sidaner returned to the famed floating city in 1905. Perhaps in part inspired by the earlier retrospective exhibition of James McNeill Whistler at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, whose visions of Venice exerted an important influence on artists at this time, Le Sidaner arrived in the autumn of this year. This trip offered him a very different impression of the city than when he had first visited at the beginning of the 1890s. This time, the artist embraced the legendary atmospheric qualities of Venice—light reflections, fog, rain and sun—and was particularly drawn to depicting these ephemeral effects at night. “He shows the true Venice,” a critic described when a selection of works from his Venetian stay were shown in Paris in 1906, “the familiar Venice, Venice true to life and lost in a dream” (“Les Salon de 1906,” in La Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1906, quoted in Henri Le Sidaner: A Magical Impressionist, exh. cat., Kunstammlungen Chemnitz, 2009, p. 43).
Finding that his Venice paintings were met with critical success, Le Sidaner returned again in the fall of 1906, and remained there with his family until February of the following year. He once again fell under the spell of the coloristic—as well as evocative—visual effects the city offered. It was during this stay that Le Sidaner and his wife, Camille, took evening gondola rides to enjoy the music played from an orchestra boat on the Grand Canal. It was these idyllic interludes that inspired the present work. The artist produced a number of sketches of the various elements of the scene, including a depiction of his wife, Camille, who appears as the seated female figure in the immediate foreground of the finished work (Farinaux-Le Sidaner, no. 967) (see Y. Farinaux-Le Sidaner, Henri Le Sidaner, Paysages intimes, Château de Saint-Rémy-en-l’Eau, 2013, p. 88). Le Sidaner had long been interested in the Symbolist equivalence between art and music. Here, he brings this to life, marrying the sounds of this evening entertainment with the vivid atmosphere and rich colors and light of Venice.
Le Sidaner’s Impressionistic views of Venice pre-date Claude Monet’s own series of Venetian views, which he painted during his first and only campaign in the city in the autumn of 1908. The artists' depictions of the canals and bridges, churches and palazzi have often drawn comparison, as both sought, in varying ways, to capture the famed effects of light and color. Though similar, Le Sidaner differed from his contemporary in his love of nocturnal scenes. In the present work, he has employed an Impressionist, and, in the dappled brushwork, a Pointillist, handling with which to capture the ceaseless sparkling lights reflecting on water, distilling something of the mysterious atmosphere of this magical city.