The Table in the White Garden at Gerberoy, ca. 1900

Henri Le Sidaner belongs to the second generation of French impressionist painters. In 1901 he bought a house in Gerberoy, a village northwest of Beauvais in France. The sober, simple life of the surrounding area fitted in well with the contemplative sensitivity of the artist. The Table in the White Garden at Gerberoy is one of the many intimate scenes depicting laid tables and flowers, both indoors and outside in the garden, that Le Sidaner painted. The human figure disappeared from his work and he developed a preference for twilight and evening scenes bathed in moonlight. In admiration of Le Sidaner’s work, the poet Emile Verhaeren wrote: ‘this artist manages to evoke silence, which is probably why his work captures our attention’.