Henri Lebasque (French, 1865–1937) Lot n° 36

Véranda sur la Plage de Cannes, Signed 'Lebasque' bottom left; also inscribed with title 'Le Bar de la Plage' on a label verso, oil on canvas 18 x 21 1/2 (46 x 55cm) Executed circa 1922.Private Collection, Paris. Vente Robert, Paris, sale of May 10, 1983, lot 169. Acquired directly from the above sale. Galerie L'Obsidienne, Paris. Private Collection, Georgia. Island Weiss Gallery, New York, New York. Private Collection, Washington, D.C. LITERATURE: Denise Bazetoux, Henri Lebasque: Catalogue Raisonné, Arteprint, Paris, Vol. I, no. 1435, p. 342 (illustrated as Verandha [sic] sur la Plage de Cannes). NOTE: A founding member and frequent exhibitor at the Salon d'Automne, Henri Lebasque was a leading Post-Impressionist painter whose work reveals the influence of fellow French artists Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, and Camille Pissarro. Yet Lebasque, who also exhibited frequently at the Salon des Indépendents, maintained a style all his own and was hailed by critics as a painter of "joy and light." As noted by the famed art critic Léon Rosenthal, Henri Lebasque successfully merged "impressionist processes and methods derived from Cézanne" (Lisa A. Banner, Peter Fairbanks, Lebasque, 1865-1937, San Francisco, 1986, p. 16). As Banner and Fairbanks point out: "In figural forms, Lebasque often favored the same flatness of shape and color typical of the Fauves (…) Yet Lebasque blends this with sophisticated elegant fluidity and a characteristic mysterious aspect-the absence of detail in his portrayal of faces (…) In an unusual sense, he achieves greater intimacy with his subjects by this technique, leaving them the anonymity of disguise by careful omission of facial distinction and coaxing greating expression from the limbs and body poses of his sitters" (Banner, Fairbanks, op. cit., p. 70). This flatness of shape, Fauvist color and absence of facial detail are seen in the present work. The artist's typica