Exhibition from 8 March to 31 October 2014
Le peintre voyageur, Le peintre rebelle, En mer avec Henri Landier, Le cycle des métamorphoses... are some of the titles of books illustrating Landier's main creative periods.
Landier's work is difficult to understand at first. Nevertheless, it was in 1991 that I got to know this French painter exhibiting a series of large landscapes of Champagne.
An exhibition at Schloss Erenstein was born and part of this important work has remained there, now enriching the Couvenzaal at Schloss St. Gerlach.
In the years that followed, I visited from time to time the magnificent studio in the old Montmartre, where the spirit of his illustrious neighbour Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec still haunts the place. It was the beginning of a friendship and Henri came to Maastricht several times and was impressed by this magical city. For my 60th birthday, he painted my portrait in front of the Meuse and the cathedral. Then there was the idea of a prestigious exhibition...
In 2000, when he visited the great Rembrandt exhibition at the Mauritshuis in The Hague, which brought together all the Master's self-portraits, Henri Landier drew from morning to night. Then he remembers that, at the age of ten, he discovered Rembrandt's 1660 self-portrait in the Louvre; the impression was such that he wanted to become a painter himself...
70 years later, close to his 80th birthday, this exhibition is therefore a personal tribute to his "Master".
Frederik J. Duparc wrote in his preface in 2000: "Rembrandt's self-portraits have preserved the artist's face for posterity. His paintings, etchings and drawings offer unique evidence of the evolution of his physiognomy, from his early days in Leiden, when he was still a young artist seeking his way, to his last years in Amsterdam, forty years later."
With this grandiose ensemble, Landier has masterfully stepped into Rembrandt's shoes, so to speak, and now lets us contemplate his 70 masterpieces, created between 2000 and 2013, which chronologically follow the life and work of the Dutch Master. For the first time, they are now being exhibited at Henri Landier's request in Rembrandt's native country, in the city of TEFAF, for the enjoyment of us all!
