1829 -1905 · Alsace, Paris, Villa Medici and Italy

Red hair, luminous flesh and twilight backgrounds make up the immediately recognizable universe of Jean-Jacques Henner.

Jean-Jacques Henner was born in 1829 in Bernwiller, into a family of Alsatian farmers. Trained in Altkirch then Strasbourg, he reached Paris thanks to the support of the Haut-Rhin department and studied at the School of Fine Arts in the workshops of Drolling and Picot. After two failures, he won the Prix de Rome in 1858 with Adam and Eve finding Abel's body. Five years at the Villa Medici allowed him to study Titian, Raphael, Correggio and Italian landscapes. Back in Paris, Henner led an official career without blending entirely into academicism. Five years at the Villa Medici allowed him to study Titian, Raphael, Correggio and Italian landscapes. Back in Paris, Henner led an official career without blending entirely into academicism. His paintings often reduced decor and story to concentrate painting on skin, hair and inner light. THE nymphs at the water's edge or at the end of the bath do not reconstruct Antiquity; they inhabit an indefinite time, between Alsatian landscape, Italian memory and dream. Red hair becomes a chromatic signature. A young girl's head can thus emerge from an almost abstract brown background, red, white of the skin and a few shadows sufficient to create presence. Henner also paints more than four hundred portraits, attentive to the physiognomy and social status of his models. His religious subjects, notably the dead Christ or the tomb, use the same chiaroscuro to make the body feel silent. After the annexation of Alsace in 1871, he chose French nationality but returns to his native region every year. Alsace. She waits becomes an icon of this loyalty. Elected to the Institute in 1889, widely distributed through engraving and photography, Henner died in Paris in 1905. His work united realism of the model, idealization and memory of the Renaissance. The "Jean-Jacques Henner" selection notably compares Nymphs after getting out of the bath and Head of a young girl with red hair. His reading favors atmosphere.

Henner removes the scenery until three lights are enough: skin, red hair and the distant glow of a landscape that seems dreamed of.