René Charles Edmond HIS
 (Colombes, 1877 – Paris, 1960)

 All Saints' Day
 Oil on canvas
 Signed and dated 1897 lower left
 33 x 41 cm

 Student of Jules LEFEBVRE, Tony ROBERT-FLEURY, Henri BIVA and Léon TANZI.

 In addition to being present at regional exhibitions (Rouen, Le Havre, Besançon, Toulouse, etc.), HIS exhibited at the age of 20 in Paris at the Salon des Artistes Français, of which he became a member in 1900. He obtained an honorable mention in 1898, a third class medal in 1900 and an honorable mention the same year at the Universal Exhibition.

 Despite his reputation as a reclusive man, we still know of his trips to the Côte d'Azur and Algeria, which were a source of inspiration for him to create several Provençal and orientalist works. He also joined the Léon GERARD gallery, where his most emblematic landscapes were exhibited.

 The painting presented here is a work apart in the artist's corpus due to its precocity - 1897, the date of his first participation in the Salon, due to its style and its subject. Here the influence of the academic teaching of his first masters LEFEBVRE and ROBERT-FLEURY emerges, embellished with a note of symbolism then in full pictorial expression at the end of the 19th century. To this day, known works of this type in the production of René HIS remain very rare.
 Indeed, later, under the influence of BIVA and TANZI, his last masters, HIS would move to a very meticulous style with nature as his exclusive source of inspiration. He would then seek perfection in his representation of wood and river banks; types of works for which he is today particularly renowned in France and Great Britain.

 Museums : Rennes, Abbeville, Senlis, Charleville, Cahors, Avallon…