Dame Louise Henderson Original Vintage New Zealand Abstract Cubist Avant Garde Portrait Oil Painting
Original vintage cubist portrait, by Louise Henderson; (Dame Louise Etiennette Sidonie Henderson, (1912-1994)). Painting is an oil on canvas, and on the larger side, for the artist, at 24" X 36". The painting is in excellent original condition- no overpaints, or restorations have been performed. The painting still retains the original frame, and framing label on the reverse; estimating the date/year of the painting's creation as approximately 1955. Gallery paper has been recently removed, to discover artist/signature. (For decades, the reverse was gallery sealed, in the last week removed for inspection) Signed on reverse, by hand, in large lettering.
Dame Louise Etiennette Sidonie Henderson
(1912-1994)
Louise Etiennette Sidonie Sauze was born on the 21st of April, in 1902; at Boulogne sur Seine, Paris, France. She was the only child of Lucie Jeanne Alphonsine Guerin and her husband, Daniel Paul Louis Sauze; secretary to the sculptor Auguste Rodin.
In Paris, she met her future husband Hubert Henderson, a New Zealander. Hubert returned to New Zealand in 1923 and proposed to Louise. She was married to Hubert by proxy, in Paris, before emigrating to New Zealand, in 1925. She settled with her husband in Christchurch, where she began studies at the Canterbury School of Art. After earning her diploma in 1931, she went on to teach at the school.
Henderson attended the Institut Maintenon from 1908 to 1919; passing her Brevet élémentaire, in 1918. In 1919, she studied French literature, graduating with the baccalauréat. From 1919 to 1921, she studied at l'École de la broderie et dentelle de la ville de Paris; graduating as a designer, in 1921. From 1922 to 1927, she was employed to draw blueprints and write articles on embroidery design, and interior decoration for the weekly journal Madame. In 1923, she also contributed embroidery designs to a Belgian journal, "La femme et le Home". She frequented public art galleries and was authorized to study in the museum and library of the Musée des Arts Decoratifs.
In the early 1940s, Louise Henderson moved to Wellington and became interested in modernist concerns after seeing several cubist-inspired paintings by John Weeks, with whom she was corresponding.
During World War Two, she worked for The Correspondence School; she championed embroidery at this time.
In 1950, the family moved to Auckland and she attended the Elam School of Art but was frustrated by its conservatism. She continued to work in John Weeks' studio, however, and her work of this period became increasingly abstract and intellectual.
In 1952, at Weeks's urging, and with her husband's support, Louise Henderson returned to Paris for a year, to improve her knowledge of modern painting. She studied there with Jean Metzinger. On her return to Auckland, she was recognized as one of the leading Modernist painters. An exhibition of Henderson's adaptations of the cubist style was held at the Auckland City Art Gallery shortly after she returned from Paris, in 1952.
In 1956, Henderson accompanied her husband to the Middle East, when he was appointed a United Nations advisor. For three years, she painted in Lebanon, Jordan, Iran and Iraq.
She continued to employ a cubist approach, at times almost totally non-figurative, for the rest of her painting life. In the 1960s, she was frequently professionally linked with the abstract painter Milan Mrkusich; they completed stained glass designs for the Church of the Holy Cross in Henderson, Auckland; and were also part of a touring exhibition of New Zealand artists' work sent to Brussels, London and Paris, in 1965–66. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Henderson frequently chose still-life subjects as the starting point for paintings. All these works contain faceted abstraction in a traditionally cubist manner but still retain enough figurative fragments to enable the subject to be easily recognized.
Henderson also frequently worked in tapestry. In the 1960s, she designed a wool mural for the New Zealand Room at the Hilton Hotel in Hong Kong made designs for the Talis Studio in Auckland, and regarded tapestry as just as important as her painting.
Henderson continued to be an active painter well into her eighties. Her outstanding contribution to New Zealand painting was recognized in 1973, through the granting of a Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council fellowship.
In the 1993, Queen's Birthday Honours, Henderson was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, for her services to art.
Louise Henderson
(Dame Louise Henderson)
(1912-1994)
New Zealand
Cubist Portrait. Due to age estimation from label on reverse with old zip code, and due to resemblance- quite possibly a portrait of New Zealand artist John Weeks. (Louise Henderson came to Elam to study under John Weeks in 1950–51.)
Oil on Canvas
Approximately 1950
24" X 36", without frame
Excellent Original Condition
Signed on Reverse
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