Henri LeBasque

Henri LeBasque (1865-1937) was one of the most beloved French Post-Impressionist painters of his generation, known for the warm intimacy of his domestic scenes and the luminous color of his southern French landscapes. Like Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, Lebasque was most fond of painting quiet domestic scenes, and his work belongs firmly within the Intimist tradition that these artists helped establish.

LeBasque began his training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Angers, near his home in Champigné. In 1885 he went to Paris for further training in the atelier of Léon Bonnat. There he made the acquaintance of Henri Matisse and of Camille Pissarro, who would also be an important influence on his mature practice. LeBasque made his exhibition debut at the Salon des Indépendants in 1893, and it was at this exhibition that he became friendly with Maximilien Luce and Paul Signac. It was at this time that LeBasque began to experiment with the principles of pointillism, absorbing the divisionist innovations of the Neo-Impressionists while developing his own more relaxed and lyrical approach to broken color.

LeBasque became a founding member of the Salon d'Automne in 1903, joining Bonnard, Vuillard, Matisse, and Georges Rouault in one of the most important artistic organizations of the early twentieth century. His mature paintings characteristically feature his wife and daughters in tranquil interiors, seaside gardens, and sun-drenched terraces, all rendered with a warm, unpretentious sensibility that has secured him a lasting audience. In 1924 Lebasque moved to the south of France, settling at Le Cannet on the Côte d'Azur, and the intensified Mediterranean light transformed the palette of his late work, which brought his career to its warmest and most colorful chapter. Often called "the painter of joy and light," LeBasque continued to paint the quiet pleasures of family life and southern French landscape until his death in Le Cannet in 1937. His paintings are held in major French and international museums.