Henri Lerolle

HENRI LEROLLE (Paris, October 3, 1848 - Paris, April 22, 1929)
"Mandame Lerolle inside the house".
Oil on canvas.
It presents informative label of old exhibition on the back.
Measurements: 61,5 x 60,5 cm; 78 x 67,5 cm (frame).
In this painting Henry Lerolle portrays his wife in the interior of the home, absorbed in the simple task of folding the clothes. It is an intimate, almost furtive moment of everyday life, transformed by the painter's gaze into a scene of serene transcendence. The open dresser drawer, the fabrics scattered on the floor and the figure concentrated on her work make up a painting of great naturalness, where domestic routine becomes an artistic motif.
In the monograph Henry Lerolle (Paris, 1848-1929), published by Ed.wapica and the Société des Amis d'Henry Lerolle in the collection Culture Mémoire, there are several works in which the artist approaches this same theme from different perspectives. They all refer to a familiar and recognizable universe: that of the apartment on Avenue Duquesne, a refined but sober interior.
The composition inevitably refers to the tradition of Dutch genre painting. As in Vermeer's scenes, the protagonist appears interiorized, absorbed in her manual labor, while daylight penetrates through the window and an open door to another room expands the depth of the space. Lerolle, however, does not belong to the impressionism of his contemporaries, but to a naturalism that favors clarity of form and sober atmosphere.
After training at the Academy of Charles Suisse and at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, under the tutelage of Louis Lamothe, he made his debut at the Salon of 1868 and exhibited regularly at the National Society of Fine Arts, where he won multiple distinctions, including a gold medal in 1900. If his early works are dominated by outdoor scenes, by the 1890s Lerolle turned his attention to a more intimate register: interiors and portraits, often featuring his wife Madeleine Escudier or his daughters Yvonne and Christine, as in the painting analyzed here.
A central figure in Parisian artistic life, Lerolle surrounded himself with painters, musicians and writers. He collected works by Degas, Monet, Renoir, Maurice Denis and Gustave Moreau; he was an amateur violinist and composer, and thanks to his wife he was introduced to contemporary music, befriending Claude Debussy, Henri Dupuis, Sergei Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky. His daughters, in turn, married the sons of the industrialist and collector Henri Rouart, and posed for Degas, Renoir, Denis and Besnard, testimony to the network of ties that linked the painter to the artistic avant-garde.
In addition to genre painting and portraiture, Lerolle cultivated mural decoration, often with religious inspiration. In 1874 he executed The Baptism of the Martyrs of Créteil for the church of Saint-Christophe, and at the 1878 Salon he presented The Communion of the Apostles, a monumental commission from the city of Paris for Saint-François-Xavier.