Henri Guinier
Henri Guinier was a French portrait and landscape painter.
Biography
Due to his father's pressure, he joined the "École des Arts et Métiers" of Châlons-sur-Marne in 1883, as an engineering student, and graduated in 1889. But then, he took courses at the Academie Julian and the École des beaux-arts in Paris, being attached to the studios of Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant and Jules Lefebvre. In 1896 he was awarded second prize in the Prix de Rome, followed by a gold medal at the Salon des artistes français in 1898. In that year he won a bursary which took him to Holland, Switzerland and Italy. He also won a silver medal at the great Paris 1900 "Exposition universelle".In 1904 he married Hélène Glaçon and they had a son, Michel, and a daughter, Annette. Michel was an engineer and worked on the Paris Métro. Annette was one of her father's favourite models. Michel was also an expert on musical organs.
It was in Paris that he made the acquaintance of fellow artist, Fernand Legout-Gérard, who introduced him into the artists' community at Concarneau where he purchased a villa called Kerdorlett, by the beach and facing west. This became his summer residence while winters were spent at his house in Neuilly-sur-Seine. He became the president of the "Union artistique des Amis de Concarneau" whose membership included painters such as Alfred Guillou and Thomas Alexander Harrison, an american painter who stayed frequently at Pont-Aven in the summer.
He was an excellent pastellist and colorist and painted many portraits, mostly of women. He painted landscapes and marine views, mostly around Concarneau and the Pays Bigouden, as well as [Le Le Faouët (Morbihan)|Faouët (Morbihan)|Le Faouët], Vannes, Paimpol and the Île-de-Bréhat.
He painted many subjects: the allegorical, genre works, nudes, portraits and the countryside, and spent time in Italy, Holland, the Alps and the Pyrénées.
He also received many public commissions including, in 1909, with several other artists, the decoration of the Neuilly-sur-Seine townhall for which he painted the composition La Tapisserie. The Ministry of War commissioned him to paint scenes from the battlefield at Verdun where he completed several pastels.
From 1920 onwards, he passed part of the winters in the mountains and painted scenes in both Pau and Argelès-Gazost as well as in the valley of the Chamonix.
In 2007, the family gave their archives to the museum in Quimper- the "Musée départemental Breton". In 2008, the museum of Le Faouët held a retrospective exhibition of his work.