Henri LEHMANN (1814-1882) - From dawn to sunset

Henri LEHMANN (Kiel 1814 – 1882 Paris)
From dawn to sunset
Circa 1839-49
Monogrammed « HL » (L imbriqué dans le H), bottom left Oil on canvas (relined), 34 3/4 by 50 2/3 in, in its original frame

PROVENANCE:
- From a private mansion since the first third of the XIXth century

THE WORK:
Singular and unprecedented iconography in the work of Henri Lehmann, we offer those who look at it to see the microcosm of an entire life summarized in its major stages. A conception inherited from Antiquity, undoubtedly enriched by an erudition that escapes us here, Lehmann makes himself the learned painter of the ages of man. Sketches of a kneeling figure similar to the old man in our composition are listed in the Marie-Madeleine AUBRUN catalog.

In a landscape with an Arcadian atmosphere, life awakens, passes and declines from its first moments until the end of its course. By sliding effect, our gaze settles on the different successive planes which naturally allow us to formulate the thread of a narrative. From the beginnings of the existence of a newborn baby over whom his parents are watching, our eyes follow the gesture of the mother who shakes a piece of drapery and slide over the standing couple, accompanied by a young girl playing the lyre and whose sound echoes the dancing circle in the last shot; itself finally, takes us back to the intermediate plane where a couple of old men have settled in the shade of a tree. Unpublished iconography in Lehmann's corpus, the theme is all the more intriguing as it was not specified by the artist who simply monograms his work as he did for Cordélia stoops to kiss King Lear (Private collection ).
Of German origin, naturalized French in 1847, Henri Lehmann initially began his apprenticeship with his father Leo Lehmann, a painter of miniatures. After a brief stint in the local artist's studio, he entered the studio of Ingres (1780 - 1867) in Paris, a master with whom he remained close throughout his life. Due to his primary nationality, he was prevented from participating in the Grand Prix competition but still left for Rome to join his teacher in 1838, who had been appointed director of the Villa Medici three years earlier. From then until 1842, he returned briefly to Paris but spent most of his time on the roads of Italy, venturing as far as Naples in the company of his comrade Théodore Chassériau (1819 - 1856) . If he had already experienced his first successes, his nature made him humbly place himself under the aegis of his master to whom he devoted the most pious respect.
In 1842, he returned to Paris permanently and lived with his uncle, a rich banker and art lover whose salons he frequented. A worldly artist, extremely cultured, tireless worker, he was quickly hailed by the world and critics as an excellent painter of portraits and history. It is in this context that he formed a sincere and deep friendship with Listz (1811 - 1886) and his mistress Marie d'Agoult (1806 - 1876), friends whose portraits he painted, also frequenting Chopin (1810 - 1849), Gérard (1770 - 1837) or Hébert (1757 - 1794) to whom he is particularly close.
From his master, of whom he was one of the favorite pupils, he retained a taste for the antique, the great figures of the Italian Renaissance and the need to approach them in order to draw and paint accurately. Trained in the search for purity of line, he did like Ingres before him, taking it from drawing and line.
In our composition, his homage to the master is twofold. With his languid figure in the foreground, Lehmann reminds us that, like the Montalbanese painter and his Jupiter and Antiope (Fig. 1), he saw Venice and the artists of the Cinquecento. If he does not insist on the sensuality of the female figures of Giorgione (1477 - 1510) and Titian (1488 - 1576), the link is made in the pose.
Even more so with this superposition of horizontal space, Henri Lehmann invites our gaze to move from scene to scene and gain depth. If a global interpretation must be understood in order to understand the painting, the ambiguous symbolism due to the absence of a title given by the painter, keeps the viewer's questions alive and reminds us of certain Venetian works.
Beyond this inspiration, it is possible that the painter was influenced by two singular groups: Nazarenes and Neo-Greeks. Because of his nationality but also because he undoubtedly met them in Germany or Italy, he assimilated in the first a form of gentleness that we perceive in the faces, in the landscape, also as a “kind of shyness or embarrassment which seems to hold back the effusion of the heart” in the words of Marcel Brion1. From the neo-Greek movement, some of whose members came from the same workshop as him, Lehmann shows that he did not remain indifferent to it. The reference to Antiquity, significant since the 18th century, thus evolved around the 1840s. Staged by rigorous compositions until then, it became the theater of idyll and dreamlike.
The neoclassical frieze construction is broken here by the two couples on the right, but the teaching of drawing as
The basis of everything remains perceptible in Lehmann's figures with their fine lines and gracefully floating draperies.