Le Fauconnier, Henri (b Hesdin, Pas-de-Calais, 1881; d Paris, Jan 1946).

French painter. He was the son of a physician and enrolled in 1900 at the Université de Paris to study law. After the death of his father, he attended the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens for a year, moving to the Académie Julian in 1902. In 1905 he exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants and shared an exhibition with the painter and printmaker Georges Le Meilleur (1861–1945), under the auspices of L’Independance Artistique (an association that exhibited at several venues in Paris). The following year Le Meilleur took Le Fauconnier on a painting trip to Brittany, where the wild, rocky shore around the fishing village of Ploumanac’h made an indelible impression. Until this trip Le Fauconnier was ranked, along with Braque, as a talented follower of Matisse, but by the Salon des Indépendants of 1908 he was separated from the younger Fauve painters for the boldness and simplification of his forms.