Henry Lerolle (paris, 1848 –1929) - On The Way, Circa 1880

Oil on canvas
Signed lower left
Dimensions: 65 x 55 cm With frame: 85 x 73 cm

Henry Lerolle portrays a woman and her child walking away on a country lane. In the background we see a house and silhouettes; certainly the entrance to a village. Far from any academicism, with an impressionist and free touch, the painter magnifies this bucolic landscape. A white light irradiates the sky on which the trees stand out in Chinese shadows, bringing a modernity to the painting.

Henry Lerolle is a naturalist painter on the fringes of the impressionist movement. In the 1880s, he painted outdoor scenes representing women at work, shepherdesses, water carriers, harvesters in the countryside.

He trained at the Academy of Charles Switzerland and then entered the School of Fine Arts in Paris in the studio of Louis Lamothe. He began at the Salon of 1868. He exhibited regularly at the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts where he obtained numerous distinctions, including a gold medal in 1900. Henry Lerolle surrounded himself with artists whose works he collected, musicians and of writers like Degas, Monet, Renoir, Maurice Denis, Gustave Moreau. Violinist and amateur composer, it was through his wife, Madeleine Escudier, that he was introduced to contemporary music. He became Claude Debussy's friend and forged relations with Henri Dupais, Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky. His two daughters married the sons of his friend the industrialist and collector Henri Rouart. They pose for Edgard Degas, Renoir, Maurice Denis or even Albert Besnard.

Bibliography: • Gérard Schurr, Pierre Cabane, Dictionary of the little masters of painting, 1820-1920, t. II, Paris, Editions de l'amateur, 1996 .• Value of Tomorrow, Editions de L'Amateur, Volume V

Museums: • In Paris: Museum of Modern Art; The Little Palace. • In the provinces: Carcassonne, Mulhouse, Nice, Orléans, Le Havre. • Internationally: New York, Metropolitan Museum, Boston, Minneapolis, Bucharest, Budapest; National Museum, https://www.henrylerolle.org