A wonderful large signed and dated framed antique French impressionist oil on canvas by French artist Henri Duhem, circa early 1900s. This serene garden landscape depicts a view of the artist's home and garden in late summer with a garden bench, pair of birds, and garden pot. The artist has beautifully captured the moment the sun is just beginning to set and is casting shadows against the light wall of the home. The artwork sits in a beautifully carved high relief antique giltwood frame having foliate and floral motifs with rocaille in the corners and sides, and a mounted brass artist name plate. Signed lower left and dated verso. Excellent condition with beautiful colors.
Henri Duhem, born April 7, 1860 in Douai, a city in the Nord département in northern France, was a descendant of an old Flemish family. He worked as a lawyer at the Bar of the Court of Douai from 1883, while practicing his passion for drawing and painting watercolors. He enrolled in Henri Harpignies' drawing course in Paris in 1887, and at the same time, befriended the painter Émile Breton, who introduced him to oil painting. Together with Virginie Demont-Breton, Emile Breton's niece and daughter of artist Jules Breton, Georges Maroniez, Francis Tattegrain, Fernand Stievenart, Felix Planquette and others, he formed the l'Ecole de Wissant in 1889. It was also in 1889 that he met a young woman painter, Marie Sergeant (1871-1918 ), whom he married the following year. They had a son, Remy (1891-1915).
Now a recognized artist, Henri Duhem abandoned his career as a lawyer in 1893 to devote himself solely to his art. He became close friends with Auguste Rodin, Camille Pissarro, Gustave Caillebotte, and his closest friend, Henri Le Sidaner.
Together with his wife, Duhem traveled extensively to Italy, Holland, Belgium, England, North Africa, and regularly to Paris for trade fairs. Every summer, he stayed at his house in Camiers, where he painted with his wife and friends. Encouraged and supported by Camille Pissarro, he exhibited more and more abroad, including Chicago, Prague, and Madrid, In April 1902, Camille Pissarro wrote to Henri Duhem:
"I went a second time to the show. I could see at your ease your beautiful picture of sheep parked in the plain. I was happy to see that you like nature simple and harmonious, unlike the noise of your neighbors, that you do not dazzle by a lightning execution so attractive to the general public.”
It was during World War I that his son Remy, also a painter, was killed in the assault on Les Éparges on June 20, 1915. His wife, Marie, was very affected by the death of her son and died of a tumor in the family home in Douai in 1918, during the German occupation. Henri Duhem, left alone, recorded his painful memories relating to the loss of his son and his wife, in a story called The Death of the Home (Éditions Figuière, 1922).
During the inter-war years, Henri Duhem remained active on the artistic level, taking part in the creation of the Salon des Tuileries in 1923. He shared his life between Douai and Paris, where he lived in the 16th arrondissement and met Anatole de Monzie, a politician and art lover, who encouraged him to continue his work.
His health deteriorated, and in the face of the threat of a Second World War, Henri Duhem definitively left the North in 1937 to settle in Juan-les-Pins, at the villa Mount Riant, until his death on October 24, 1941, during the German occupation. He bequeathed his collection of paintings to his adopted daughter, Nelly Sergeant-Duhem, who, keeping with the wishes of her father, gave the entire collection to The Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1985. As one of the foundations of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the Musée Marmottan opened to the public on June 21, 1934, and came to be known as the Musée Marmottan Monet. One can discover works such as the Promenade near Argenteuil painted in 1875 by Claude Monet or Bouquet of Flowers painted in 1897 in Tahiti by Paul Gauguin.
Duhem had regularly presented his works at the Salon of Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. He had two solo exhibitions dedicated to him in Paris, under the patronage of the art critic Roger Marx: one in 1904, at the Druet Gallery, another in 1908, at the Georges Petit Gallery.
In June 1919, a new solo exhibition was dedicated to him, still at the Georges Petit Gallery, including 82 watercolors dedicated to the Great War in the occupied North. In 1926 he was elected a corresponding member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts and in 1932 he was promoted to the rank of Commander of French Ordre National de la Légion d'honneur.
His art is closer to the intimacy of his friend Henri Le Sidaner. Post-Impressionist, his works express the latent poetry of things, through simple themes like flocks of sheep, riversides and canals, mills, snow landscapes, millstones and fieldwork, and gardens, with a game on sensitivity of effects due to changes in light; the effects of dawn or evening.
Works in public collections include:
Arras, Museum of Fine Arts
Bailleul, Benoît-De-Puydt Museum
Blackburn, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery
Cambrai, Museum of Cambrai
Douai, Museum of Chartreuse
Museum of Étaples-sur-Mer
Lille, Palace of Fine Arts
Lyon, Museum of Fine Arts Lyon
Marmottan Museum - Paris
Orsay Museum - Paris
Dimensions:
h - 37" framed; 27.75" unframed
w - 47" framed; 38.25" unframed
d - 2"
Frame is 4.75" inches wide
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