Henri Liénard de SAINT-DELIS The entrance to the port of Honfleur Oil on panel signed Certificate

Henri Liénard de SAINT-DELIS (1878 / 1949)

The entrance to the port of Honfleur.

Oil on panel signed lower right.

34x36,5 cm

Painting exhibited in 1973 at the Deauville Museum under catalog number 111 during the exhibition "Normandy, from Pre-Romanticism to Post-Impressionism"

Henri Liénard de Saint-Délis is the son of a dragoon officer. The family moved to Le Havre in 1885. In high school, Henri Saint-Délis was in the same class as Othon Friesz and they became lifelong friends. He and Friesz studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Le Havre, where they were pupils of Charles Lullier, a former pupil of Ingres, and it was there that they met Jongkind. He also meets Dufy, Braque, Lecourt and Copieux. When Dufy left for Paris, Henri de Saint-Délis followed him, but he only stayed there for a year, frequenting the studio of Jean Paul Laurens in 1900, visiting museums and discovering the Impressionists. Back in Le Havre, he led a happy life with his companions until, in 1905, he contracted tuberculosis and had to spend 12 years in a Swiss sanatorium. His brother René visited him and brought back his mountain paintings to show them to his former studio colleagues. Most of his Swiss production was destroyed during the bombing of Le Havre in 1944. When he returned to Normandy around 1920, he left Le Havre to settle in Honfleur. It is a pity that his Swiss paintings have been almost completely destroyed; from what remains, it appears that this period was influenced by Fauvism, possibly due to his friendship with Friesz. The color is lively and the composition organized in large arabesques. It was in Honfleur that he painted most of his work: a few portraits and still lifes, but above all landscapes representing the coast, the countryside and the port. He also does one watercolor a day. His paintings of Honfleur are lively and fresh, their design deliberately summary.

He seems to have exhibited regularly at the Salon des Indépendants, in Paris, from 1905. Two personal exhibitions were organized during his lifetime – in Paris in 1945 and in Rouen in 1948. Retrospectives were held in 1950 at the École des Beaux-Arts du Havre, in 1953 at the Town Hall of Honfleur, in 1954 in Paris, in 1955 in London, in 1961 in Paris, in 1963 in Paris, in Honfleur and in Le Havre, and in 1965 and 1971 in Honfleur .

Museums:

Rouen: Port of Honfleur.

New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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