Henri Joseph Thomas

HENRI JOSEPH THOMAS (Belgium,1878 - 1972)
"The green shoes".
Oil on canvas.
Preserves original Art Deco frame.
Signed in the upper left corner.
Measurements: 61 x 76 cm; 77 x 90 cm (frame).
This painting represents one of the artist's favorite models. At first glance, the work appears with a friendly and attractive tone; however, closer observation reveals a subtly mischievous and erotic nuance. The painter seems to take pleasure in enveloping his model in a cocoon of delicate fabrics, whose transparencies and satin sheens dialogue with the marbled whiteness of her skin. The study starts from the canon of the academic nude, classical and sober in appearance, but transforms it to the threshold of the narrative and the anecdotal: a lady who, at the moment of dressing, bends over the bed to pick up an indoor shoe. Her gesture is light, her expression fresh and rosy, impregnated with a carefree happiness. The general tone evokes the Fragonards of the 18th century, celebrating intimate pleasures and, with them, the vitality of existence.
A disciple of the Brussels Academy, the painter exhibited at the Cercle Artistique in 1906, 1909 and 1921, as well as at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts between 1906 and 1910. His career developed between Brussels and Paris, extending the itinerary that artists such as Odilon Redon or Félicien Rops had already started, by consolidating a cultural axis between the two capitals. His career, broad and recognized, earned him the attention of private collectors and European museums.
In addition to his qualities as a painter and sculptor, he cultivated the art of engraving. He illustrated Théodore Hannon's La Toison de Phryné (1913) and the 1925 reprint of Barbey d'Aurevilly's Les Diaboliques. His themes expanded towards the representation of the bourgeois universe trapped in the nocturnal atmosphere of Paris and Montmartre, with its excesses and contradictions. Later, he transferred that gaze to the worldly interiors of the 1920s, where women appear bejeweled, surrounded by silks and luxurious fabrics, symbols of a refined hedonism that defines both his art and his era.