Henry Hayden (1883 Warsaw - 1970 Paris), Port of Cherbourg, ca. 1938.

oil, panel, 38 × 46 cm
Signed l. d.: Hayden

Exhibited:
- Henri Hayden. Masters of the Ecole de Paris, Villa la Fleur, Konstancin-Jeziorna, September 20 - December 31, 2013.
Reproduced:
- "Henri Hayden. Masters of the Ecole de Paris", exhibition catalog, text by Artur Winiarski, Villa la Fleur, Konstancin-Jeziorna, Warsaw 2013, cat. no. 61, p. 146 (ill.)

"The year 1921 brings a breakthrough in Hayden's art. More landscapes appear then (...). In the artist, who had been brought up from a young age on plein air paintings, and who appreciated summer trips to Brittany, there must inevitably have been a break in the impasse associated with the cubist rigor imposed by patronage with all its consequences [the artist's early patron, Rosenberg, is referred to]. (...) In contact with the landscape of the South, the artist came to a painful conclusion: "I realized that during my attempts to paint from nature I had lost the visual sensitivity needed for this. Surely, attempts to regain this sensitivity had to begin with getting rid of all stylization, in which the artist imposes his own vision, drawing from it only what he himself deems essential. Hayden's new path was to focus mainly on mimetic functions. Only faithful imitation of nature and painterly humility could allow the artist to regain that "sensitivity" of which he wrote. (...) Already the first landscapes from Cassis in 1922 confirmed the artist's return to the classical representational formula." Masters of the École de Paris. Henri Hayden, ed. by A. Winiarski, Warsaw 2013, p. 53