Henri-Alexandre Sollier

Henri-Alexandre Sollier (born 1896 in Bagnolet, died 1966 in Paris), was a French painter and illustrator .

Biography

Entering the Académie Julian in 1906, painter, draughtsman and lithographer Henri Sollier, born in Bagnolet, near Paris, on 7 December 1886, graduated to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1908, and worked in the ateliers of François Flameng, and, after 1910, of François Schommer. In spring 1919 he celebrated the victory of the Allies with two eloquently titled paintings, ''Pour elle!'' and ''Par elle !'', which he exhibited at the Devambez Gallery in Paris. After the interruption of the First World War a fruitful decade ensued of prizes and awards, enabling him to undertake extensive travels.

Trip to Senegal

In 1920 his first participation at the Salon des Artistes Français achieved a Mention Honorable, together with the Académie des Beaux-Arts Prix Leclercq-Maria Bouland; the following year the Prix de l’Afrique Occidentale Française brought him a travel grant. Sollier set off immediately for French West Africa, to spend three years in Senegal, sending portraits of indigenous peoples – Wolof and Bambara women – to the Pavillon de Marsan and the Salon des Artistes Français, and colourful and exotic market scenes from Dakar. From these bustling centres of trade Sollier brought back portraits of merchants from neighbouring lands, such as the ''Maure au chapelet'', submitted to the 1923 Salon.

Between exoticism and regionalism

On return in 1924 Sollier reserved his African canvases for his regular admirers at the Salon des Artistes Français, while at the Salon d’Automne, as a newcomer, he presented two paintings in settings more familiar to the public: ''Les tilleuls'' and ''Le porche de Chartres''. The painter cultivated two themes, the exotic and the regional, at least until 1935, regularly exhibiting canvases inspired by Africa at the Salon de la Société Coloniale des Artistes Français. One of these recalls his secondary activity as an illustrator, exemplified in his poster design for the 1925 Exposition Agricole in Dakar and Saint-Louis. Ten years later Sollier took part in the first Salon de la France d’Outre-Mer (Salon of French Overseas Territories, Paris, Grand-Palais), and in a group show organised in Brussels by the Société Coloniale des Artistes Français.
The year 1929 marked Sollier's discovery of Brittany: a stay in Douarnenez, Finistère, won this Africa specialist's heart: the landscapes and deeply traditional people of Brittany offered a different kind of exoticism from his African sojourn.

Joining the Naturalist painting

Sollier did more than just capture the picturesque motifs found in the landscapes of Brittany; he also painted realistic portraits of its inhabitants. In ''Solitude'', winner of a silver medal at the 1930 Salon, Sollier demonstrated his conversion to the naturalist style of the day. His uncompromising portraits of a Breton women echoe the social realism of Jules Adler, whose academy Sollier frequented in parallel to his courses at the École des Beaux-Arts.
In the 1934 Salon ''Les aïeux'' won a gold medal. The composition's compact organisation intensifies the frontal dialogue between the protagonists, who bear a certain family resemblance to the kin of ''Jean-le-Boiteux, a peasant from Plougasnou (Finistère)'' portrayed by Jean-François Raffaëlli in 1876. The coppery skin tones and broad brushstrokes that convey the humble condition of Sollier's ''Aïeux'' are close to the manner of his contemporary Lucien Simon. Simon's work focused on the Bigouden area of Brittany and showed a strong ethnographic content, as in ''Procession'' à Penmar’ch. Taking up the mantle of Courbet’s realism, Lucien Simon and his fellow artists popularised Breton subjects in Paris at the turn of the century.

Sollier in Brittany

In 1933 he went to Bénodet

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