Lot 128: Lucien Henry , French 1850-1896 DOG Oil on board

Signed with initials LH / 1890 (lower left) Oil on board

36.4 by 52.5cm

Ann Stephen (ed.), Visions of a republic: the work of Lucien Henry: Paris, Noumea, Sydney, Sydney: Powerhouse Publishing, 2001, p. 232

Exiled French communard Lucien Henry is best-known for his spirited advocacy of the use of the use of indigenous motifs (wildflowers in particular) by Australian designers; the splendid manuscript illustrations of his unpublished magnum opus Australian decorative arts: one hundred studies and designs (1889-1891) are preserved in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

Henry was also a skilled architect and painter (he trained in Paris under Viollet-le-Duc and Gerôme), and was Australia's first lecturer in art, working for the New South Wales Board of Technical education from 1883 to 1889. The present work shows both the high quality of the artist's easel painting and his aesthetic grounding in European plein-air Naturalism, the foundational style of Australian Impressionism. Much of the artist's work having been lost or destroyed, the present painting is a rare and significant survival, as well as a charming and evidently personal study.