Biographie

1865–1937

Born into a mod­est fam­i­ly, Hen­ri Lebasque arrived in Paris in 1886, fol­low­ing stud­ies in Angers. In Paris he fre­quent­ed the Académie Colarossi, an art school which was not bound by the aca­d­e­m­ic pre­scrip­tions of the tra­di­tion­al École des Beaux-Arts.
Dur­ing his first years in Paris, Lebasque was able to earn a liv­ing with poly­chroming sculp­tures and as a dec­o­ra­tive painter work­ing on the fres­coes of the Pan­theon build­ing dur­ing 1888–1894.

Lebasque exhib­it­ed his own paint­ings at the ‘Salon des Indépen­dants’ as of the end of the 1880s. Dur­ing the ear­ly 1890s Lebasque met the Neo-Impres­sion­ism painters Paul Signac and Max­im­i­lien Luce. Despite a tem­po­rary lik­ing for their Divi­sion­ism tech­nique of Pointil­lism, and despite the close rela­tions he enter­tained with Hen­ri Matisse and the Nabis painters Pierre Bon­nard and Félix Val­lot­ton, Lebasque remained quite inde­pen­dent from the dif­fer­ent artis­tic exper­i­ments and research­es of the time. Togeth­er with Matisse, Lebasque found­ed the ‘Salon d’Automne’ in 1903.
In 1906, Lebasque dis­cov­ered the light of the French Riv­iera in the towns of Saint-Tropez, Sanary and Sainte-Maxime which would be deci­sive in his colour devel­op­ment. In 1924, Lebasque set­tled per­ma­nent­ly in Le Can­net, close to Cannes. His abun­dant pro­duc­tion con­sists of inti­mate fam­i­ly scenes, por­traits and nudes, show­ing diverse influ­ences, from Pointil­lism of the 1890s to Fau­vism of the 1900s.
Lebasque passed away in Le Can­net in 1937.