HENRI HAYDEN (POLAND-FRANCE/ 1883-1970) - Lot 191

HENRI HAYDEN (POLAND-FRANCE/ 1883-1970) Sailboat on the coast at Kergroës, Moëlan-sur-Mer, Finistère in Brittany, 1908 Original oil on canvas Signed and dated 'HAYDEN 1908' (lower right); re-signed and dated, and titled 'Hayden 1908 Kergroës' (reverse) H_42 cm W_63 cm PROVENANCE - Sale, Paris, Drouot, Maître Loudmer, March 30, 1976, lot 123. - Private Breton collection, descended through several generations. EXHIBITION - Rennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts (March 14-May 14, 1979) & Le Havre, Musée des Beaux-Arts (September-October 1979), 'Henri Hayden, Rétrospective', between March-October 1979, pp. 12-13, no. 1 (the present work illustrated, p. 13, rep. no. 2). This work is registered in the archives of the Comité Henri Hayden. A certificate of authenticity from Laurence Le Cieux, President of the Hayden Committee, dated November 16, 2025, will be given to the purchaser. HENRI HAYDEN IN BRITTANY 1908, IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF PAUL GAUGUIN AND ÉMILE BERNARD AT PONT-AVEN Henri Hayden, born in Warsaw in 1883, two years after Picasso, is now reasonably regarded as one of the main pioneers of Cubism in the 1910s, not only in Poland, but worldwide. Prior to his Cubist works, Henri Hayden was also one of the first Polish artists, after Wladyslaw Slewinski, to incorporate the Cloisonnist aesthetic of the Pont-Aven School into his work, following his first visit to Brittany in 1908. Hayden's present work, previously unavailable at auction, is a brilliant example of the artist's Breton period. Hayden left Poland for France at the age of 24, in 1907. Soon after his arrival in Paris, he met his elder compatriot Slewinski, an emigrant from 1888 and friend of Gauguin. Slewinski took Hayden to the land of inspiration of the Finistère avant-gardes of the 1880s and 90s, to develop his art outside the academic codes of the Beaux-Arts in Paris. After Paris, it was in Moëlan-sur-Mer, on the beach at Kergroës (the subject of the present work) that Hayden first discovered Brittany in 1908. The austere, synthetic aesthetic inherited from Emile Bernard and Paul Gauguin in the 1880s is repeated. Perspective is flattened, colors are flattened. The canvas is rough, the meshes thick and artisanal, like those of Gauguin and Bernard. Henri Hayden's work in Brittany between 1908 and 1912 is rare and historic, and bears witness to the search for renewal by an avant-garde artist attracted to France at the beginning of the 20th century. The present work, a rare painting from Hayden's "Pont-Aven" period, has never been shown before in public sales. Expert: Thomas Morin-Williams