Henri Duhem - Les Quais De La Scarpe à Douai - Oil On Canvas

Henri DUHEM (Douai, 1860 – Juan-les-Pins, 1941)
Les Quais de la Scarpe à Douai
Oil on canvas 51x65 cm / 59.5x74.5 cmframed
Signed lower left "HENRI DUHEM"

Initially a lawyer, Henri Duhem decided in 1893 to devote himself to his passion, painting, and led a successful artistic career. Member of the Institute, commander of the Legion of Honor, he exhibited with the Société nationale des beaux-arts, the Société nouvelle des peintres et des sculpteurs, the Aquarellistes français and was also one of the founders of the Salon des Tuileries.
Close to Henri Le Sidaner (1862-1939), Henri Duhem is one of the painters described as intimists, striving with realism and poetry to "express the inner life of things or beings"[1].A landscape painter, he particularly celebrated the beauty of his hometown, Douai, and of the North of France, even if his travels in other French regions, in Belgium, Holland and Venice, also provided him with motifs to paint in oil or watercolour.
Here, he depicts, from the Quai Bertin, the houses of old Douai bordering the Scarpe, the river that crosses the town, and their shimmering in the water. A few characters on the banks enliven the composition, which the artist carefully developed, as revealed by two preparatory drawings and an oil sketch kept at the Musée de la Chartreuse de Douai[2]. On the back of the latter, an inscription "1903" allows us to date our painting to the very beginning of the 20th century.

[1] Camille Mauclair, LAS to Maurice Denis, St Leu Taverny, undated, Departmental Archives of Yvelines, Ms 7819.
[2] See inventory numbers 2011.0.119, 2011.0.121 and 3020.63 on the Musenor online database.