Hans Seiler (1907–1986) The Harvest Festivals In La Roque Gageac In 1948

Hans SEILER
(Neuchâtel 1907 – 1986)
The threshing at La Roque Gageac
Oil on canvas
H. 38 cm; W. 55 cm
Signed lower left, titled on the reverse.
1948

Provenance: Artist’s studio. By descent.

Born in Switzerland, Hans Seiler spent his childhood in Bern, where his father, a doctor, practiced medicine. By the age of 17, he was already passionate about drawing and would go for walks carrying sketchbooks, which he filled with sketches. The curator of the city museum, who had a chance to look at his work, advised him to begin artistic training. Seiler went to Lyon and enrolled in the city’s School of Fine Arts in the sculpture department under the guidance of a student of Rodin’s. She quickly encouraged him to spread his wings and move to Paris.

In 1927, he enrolled at the Académie Ranson, where Roger Bissière taught him painting. This influence would be evident in Seiler’s art until the very end of his life. Having become friends with his teacher, he met Marcel Gromaire, who would also become an artistic pillar in his life and a loyal friend.

In 1934, he settled in Chennevières-sur-Marne with his wife, then, on the eve of the war, purchased a charming house in the Périgord region, in La Roque-Gageac. This home, which overlooks the Dordogne and offers a breathtaking view of the landscape from the terrace, became a place of renewal and vitality for the painter and his family. Numerous works were created at the foot of the cliffs and from within the house.

Seiler traveled extensively through Finistère and Normandy starting in the 1930s, and later explored the Netherlands with its flat landscapes and stormy skies. He discovered Spain in 1978 and spent every fall there until 1986, creating magnificent works depicting fortified towns and arid mountains.

Numerous exhibitions have been dedicated to his art during his lifetime and since his death, notably at the Musée Bonnat in Bayonne and at various galleries in Paris and Switzerland. The most recent exhibition took place at the Meudon Museum in 2007 to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Stylistically, Seiler worked with the interplay of light—between shadows and highlights—which he often delineated with grid-like lines crisscrossing his compositions. From works characterized by vivid colors, he shifted in the last 15 years of his life to soft, pastel hues, which lent his landscapes a fresh perspective that no artist had yet captured in the Périgord.

This painting, created in La Roque-Gageac during the summer of 1948, depicts one of the most beautiful scenes from the bygone agricultural era of our countryside. Threshing takes place after the harvest, when the sheaves are gathered on a hard-packed earthen threshing floor, and the sheaves and their grains are beaten with flails to separate the grains from their stalks and husks. In this painting, we can make out the figures busily at work under the blazing sun, rendered in Seiler’s ochre tones. Although not precisely located, the scene takes place in La Roque Gageac, near the home of a town council member who had been newly elected in November 1947, whose Maypole had been erected a short time earlier.

The tradition of the “mai” (May tree) is unique to the Périgord and a few neighboring departments, where a tree covered with tricolor flags carried by guests is raised in front of the homes of all the city council members. The council members take turns welcoming residents for a “wine of friendship,” naturally in the month of May.