AN ALLEY · HENRI LE SIDANER
THE TABLE · HENRI LE SIDANER
Five of Besnard’s canvases have been bought by the Government, and all are now to be found in the Luxembourg, an honour few artists can boast of. A list is given for reference. The first of the series is a portrait of the artist, the others being entitled Femme qui se chauffe, La Morte, Port d’Alger au Crépuscule, and Entre deux Rayons. The second and third are excellent examples of a branch of art in which Besnard is supreme. His nudes and portraits are wonderfully fine in drawing, and bewitching in colour. They will form his greatest claim to future immortality.
Besnard is a particularly sympathetic lover of horses, and no one can more naturally reproduce them in paint than he. His chief recreation is driving, and he is often to be seen “tooling” along the roads of the Bois de Boulogne and other suburbs of Paris. There is little to add personally about Albert Paul Besnard. He was born in Paris, married Mdlle. Dubray, a sculptor of much talent, and resides in the Rue Guillaume Tell. His career has been a continued series of success upon success, and at the present moment he is one of the shining stars of contemporary art in France.
Allied to the later phase of the Impressionist movement, although not actually identified with the group of artists known as the typical Impressionists, is Didier-Pouget. His habitual manner of regarding Nature, his pure and cheerful colours, and his natural temperament, include him in this survey of workers in “la peinture claire.” He has a special gift of composition, “mise en plan,” as the French say, a strong feeling for balance and form. He is at his best when depicting morning and sunset effects. His scenes of heather bathed in sunshine or glistening with the dew of an autumnal sunrise are rendered with an exceptional verisimilitude, strength, and truth.
Didier-Pouget was born at Toulouse in 1864, the son of the editor of one of the local journals. His father, a great lover of Nature, gave the boy every encouragement in his ambition to become an artist. It was the custom of father and son to take long country walks, and the elder would point out natural beauties and discuss the methods of their pictorial representation, relating at the same time biographical details of the great artists, and in every way endeavouring to train the child and sustain his ideals. After Didier-Pouget had passed through a plain schooling, professors were engaged, notably MM. Auguin and Baudit. For the latter (a local artist of genius, who, had he forsaken the quieter life of the provinces for the glare of Parisian publicity, should have attained to the highest honours an artist can reach) his old pupil has still much admiration. Then Didier-Pouget passed into the studio of Lalanne, the celebrated etcher and illustrator. Under these influences many profitable years were spent, the seed-time of a most fruitful career.
Locally the youth was regarded as a prodigy of talent, and great things were expected of him. Pictures were exhibited in the provinces which attracted much appreciation, and found many purchasers. Thus encouraged, the artist sought a wider audience, and went to Paris. It was a wise step, and Fortune smiled on him from the first. From 1886 he has exhibited year by year at the Salon, each fresh season showing a marked advance in his art, bringing to the world of Paris new and delightful colour-schemes and vivid compositions.
Didier-Pouget achieved his “Mention Honorable” in 1890, won the “Concours Troyon” the following year, and was awarded the gold medal at the Salon in 1896 upon the recommendation of Gérôme, hitherto a strong opponent to the new style. He is now a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, his medals, diplomas, and awards from foreign exhibitions and Governments being almost innumerable. Such a measure of success is rarely achieved nowadays by a man under forty in the arduous profession of art. The State and the municipality of Paris are amongst his most regular patrons. Besides the pictures reserved for Paris, he is represented in the museums of Lyons, Macon, Toulouse, Tunis, the Embassy at St. Petersburg, the galleries of Boston, U.S.A., and Leipsic, and the private collections of the Kings of Italy and Greece.