Henri D'Anty, French Modernist Henri d'Anty Abstract Town Landscape Oil Painting Ecole d'Paris

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Hand signed lower left

Henry Maurice D'Anty (French, 1910-1998), oil on canvas village streetscape painting depicting a European town centered … Read more Hand signed lower left

Henry Maurice D'Anty (French, 1910-1998), oil on canvas village streetscape painting depicting a European town centered by a tall church steeple beneath a dramatic sky. Rendered in a modern Post Impressionist manner with expressive palette knife work and textured brushstrokes, the composition employs a subdued palette of grays, whites, blues, and earthy red tones to create a dynamic and atmospheric effect.
Hand signed lower left.

Dimensions: 40 X 27.25 X 1 in. Work Size: 36 x 23.5 in.



Henri d'Anty
French Painter of the Second Generation School of Paris
Henri d'Anty (born Maurice Henry, 1910–1998) was a French painter recognized as a noted member of the second generation of the École de Paris (School of Paris), known for richly colored, heavily impastoed depictions of rural French life, village fêtes, still lifes, and the streets of Montmartre. Born on September 8, 1910, in the Belleville quarter of Paris, d'Anty developed an early fascination with the picturesque, steeply sloping streets and stairways of his native neighborhood — a visual sensibility that would later find its echo in the winding lanes of Montmartre. He trained at the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, developing close artistic affinities with the circle of painters associated with the Grande Chaumière.
A Studio Once Occupied by Picasso
Henry D'Anty was a lifelong Parisian painter who, upon discovering Montmartre, went on to work out of a studio once occupied by Pablo Picasso — a detail that speaks to his deep roots within the historic artistic geography of the neighborhood that shaped so much of early twentieth-century French painting. Formative childhood summers spent in Saint-Cast, Brittany, and later along the banks of the Marne near Saint-Maurice, with its barges, sailboats, and locks, gave him a lasting visual vocabulary that he carried into his mature landscapes of Brittany, Béarn, and northern France.
Context: The Second Generation of the École de Paris
D'Anty's generation of the École de Paris marked a distinct chapter from the earlier, pre-war Montparnasse circle of Marc Chagall, Amadeo Modigliani, and Chaim Soutine. This post war cohort of figurative painters — a group that art historians count among its most representative figures Bernard Buffet, Yves Brayer, André Minaux, Maurice Boitel, and Jean Jansem — held firm to figuration and vivid color even as abstraction came to dominate the postwar Parisian avant-garde, exhibiting together in the same independent Paris salons that gave the movement its identity. D'Anty regularly showed at the Salon des Peintres Témoins de Leur Temps, one of the key exhibition venues for this generation of French figurative painters. One critic later described his particular corner of this movement as "l'École de Paris triomphante des années cinquante" — a joyful, sensual School of Paris that stayed rooted in Impressionist warmth rather than turning toward existentialist bleakness.
Signature Style
D'Anty's mature palette is dominated by a powerful ruby red, typically paired with ochre and blue, applied in broad, overlapping impasto passages that saturate the canvas with luminous intensity; he then defined the painting's essential forms with dark, graphic outlines, giving his surfaces an enamel-like brilliance and density. His recurring subjects — rural festivals, village rooftops, harbor scenes, and quiet still lifes — reflect a sustained devotion to the everyday textures of provincial French life.
Recognition and Legacy
D'Anty won the Prix Cézanne in 1959 and the Prix Populiste in 1973, and is listed in the Bénézit Dictionary of Artists, a standard reference for the French art market. His work toured through exhibitions across the Canadian provinces and cultural centers in 1985, the same year he received the Diplôme d'Honneur at the Vittel International Prize for Painting and Sculpture, and in 1986 the town of Charenton-le-Pont mounted a tribute exhibition in his honor. D'Anty died on December 4, 1998, in Villejuif, France. His paintings are held today in the collections of the Musée Toulouse-Lautrec in Albi, the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, the Chrysler Museum of Art in the United States, and museums in Warsaw and Barcelona.
Keywords: Henri d'Anty, Henry d'Anty, French painter, École de Paris second generation, Bernard Buffet contemporary, Montmartre painter, Picasso studio, Académie Julian, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Prix Cézanne, Salon des Peintres Témoins de Leur Temps, Brittany landscape painting, French rural genre painting, impasto oil painting, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec Albi, Chrysler Museum of Art
A noted member of the second generation of the School of Paris, Henri d'Anty won the Prix Cezanne in 1959 and the Prix Populiste in 1973. He is listed in all relevant art reference works including Benezit which gives a signature sample. We are pleased to offer a vibrant work by this French Post-Impressionist..

EXHIBITIONS

1949: Galerie de Pequipe, rue Saint Rustique, Montmartre.
1950: Galerie Lebar, rue Uon Jost, Paris.
1951: Galerie Hermann, rue des Beaux Arts, Paris.
1952: Galerie Lebar, rue Leon Jost, Paris.
1953: Galerie de la Maison des Beaux Arts, Paris.
1954: Galerie de l’Institut, rue de Seine, Paris.
1955: Galerie Duncan, rue de Seine, Paris.
1956: Galerie Clio, Nice.
1957: Galerie Mourgue, avenue de I’Opéra, Paris.
1957: Mairie de Barentin.
1958: Galerie Schneider, avenue Matignon, Paris.
1958: Caves de la Tour Eiffel, rue Charles Dickens, Paris.
1959: Scala Nebli, Madrid.
1960: Musée de I’Athdride, Geneve.
1960: Galerie Stoliar, Cannes.
1961: Palais de la Mediterranee, Nice.
1961: Galerie Cadror, Berne.
1961: Cimaise du Vieux Colombier, Paris.
1962: Dickson Galerie, Washington.
1962: Galerie 16, Saint Antoine, Cannes. See less