This work is inscribed on the reverse: Le tableau est de la main de mon père Henri Lebasque (la jeune fille est ma soeur Nono peint en 1920) Marthe Lebasque, Cannes 3 Août 1967.

Influenced by his contact with Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard during the 1890s, Henri Lebasque spent the better part of his career painting the quiet moments of family life.  While Vuillard focused his intimiste vision on the domestic interior, a number of Bonnard’s Nabis paintings depict figures outside, and it is Bonnard who seems to have been among the most important influences on Lebasque’s career.  Lebasque became an artist known for paintings of calm and quiet moments, motᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚhers and children, resting nudes, women seated in the bright light and colorful shadows of the south of France. 

Despite this more traditional choice of subject matter, Lebasque spent the early part of his career in contact with various figures of the avant-garde.  Lebasque was a co-founder of the Salon d’Automne with Henri Matisse in 1903, the annual exhibition that in 1905 featured the bright colored paintings by Matisse, Vlaminck, Derain and others dubbed “les fauves.”  Lebasque also had a brief period of close attention to the pointillist painters Seurat and Signac, and although he quickly abandoned💫 the tight brushwork of these painters, the idea of complimentary color remained as a central idea.

Paul Vitry writes that during a stay in Saint-Tropez in 1920, Lebasque returned to the theme of the terrace which he had painted earlier in his career.  Vitry writes that in these paintings “the technique is noticeably different: the luminous state is more and more rare and it is through large, flat brushwork that light is expressed; the shadows are always transparent and colored, the play of light and shadow is established with a tranquil harmony, without arguments; because Lebasque, while making concessions to the new techniques, always paints with clarity and without brutality.  Nothing is more opposed to his temperament, to his instinct, than the heavy run of somber shades that sadden many of the canvases of the younger generation after the war, and so, here, with this new period, the figures are solidly established and painted on a large scale, with more force and with more oppositions of striking tones, like Jeune fille au châle espagnol …” (fig. 1) (Paul Vitry, Henri Lebasque, Paris, 1928, pp. 78-79).

Jeune fille au châle espagnol et petit violiniste; Saint-Tropez is obviously closely related to the present painting.  Both show his daughter Nono standing on a terrace, surrounded by the orange light and purple shadows of the French Rivera.  Just as Vitry describes in the related work, the present painting is a symphony of opposing tones: the orange fan against the blue sky, the greens and reds of Nono’s dress and shawl against the orange and purple of the landsca😼pe.  With all of these striking combinations, however, Lebasque weaves his signature moment of quiet calm.  By simplifying the composition, and removing the violinist, Lebasque has made the moment even quieter, focusing our gaze to meet that of his daughter, as she shields herself from the blazing orange light.

Fig. 1, Henri Lebasque, Jeune fille au châle espagnol et petit violiniste; Saint-Tropez, 1920