Leandro Sirvent was a Spanish painter from Jijona, in the hills above Alicante, who trained at the school of fine arts in Madrid and made his career in Paris. He first appears in 1867, living in Montmartre and showing two paintings at the Paris Salon. By the 1890s he was a still-life specialist whose fruit pictures were being reproduced as colour prints, sold at the Hôtel Drouot and shipped to buyers in Canada. He signed his canvases simply Sirvent, and at times used two other names entirely, which is a large part of why his own has been so hard to trace.

Peint la nature morte avec beaucoup de succès.
Paints still life with great success.
Société des Arts du Canada, Montreal, catalogue of 1893–1894

From Jijona to Montmartre

The catalogue of the 1867 Paris Salon lists him as “SIRVENT (Leandro), born at Gijona (Spain), pupil of the École des Beaux-Arts of Madrid,” living at 8 rue Coustou in Montmartre. He showed two paintings that year. The first, La vérité découverte par le temps (Truth Uncovered by Time, no. 1422), was an allegory in the academic manner. The second came from home: Cérémonie funèbre pour le décès d'un enfant; coutume de Gijona (Funeral Ceremony for the Death of a Child, a Custom of Jijona, no. 1423).

The custom was real and it startled outsiders. In the Valencian country, the wake for a young child was kept with music and dancing, on the belief that the child had gone straight to heaven. Gustave Doré sketched the same scene in Jijona on his 1862 journey through Spain with Baron Charles Davillier. Sirvent painted it as a native of the town, and the critic for L'Union médicale, reviewing the Salon that year, could not shake it: “a dry and somewhat brutal painting; but the impression one feels before this scene could not be more painful. The poor little body, laid out fully dressed in the midst of these people who are dancing, is horrible.”

The Still Life Years

In the decades that followed, Sirvent turned to still life and to the Paris picture trade, and that is where the rest of his record lies. In 1892 the Paris publisher Borrel issued four of his paintings as chromolithographs, printed by Richon: Oranges, Melon et Huîtres (Melon and Oysters), Pommes et Poires (Apples and Pears) and Panier de pêches (Basket of Peaches). A publisher reproduces pictures it expects to sell in quantity, so by then his fruit still lifes plainly had a market.

On 4 and 5 December 1893, his still life Joie et Tristesse (Joy and Sorrow), signed at left, was sold at the Hôtel Drouot, the great Paris auction house. A painting of that title, an elaborate arrangement of pistols, a vase and banknotes, reappeared at auction in 2016. In 1900 a second canvas, Deux Majestés (Two Majesties), signed lower right, sold at Drouot in the collection sale of Dr. Mireur.

Three Names

The Société des Arts du Canada, a Montreal company incorporated in 1893 that sold French paintings to Canadian buyers, printed a catalogue that settles a question no auction database has answered. Under the entry Bihet it reads “pseudonym of Sirvent, former exhibitor, paints still life with great success,” and lists thirteen still lifes, among them Shrimps, Oranges and Peaches. Under Perez, again “pseudonym of Sirvent,” it offers a farm picture, Tow-horses.

For collectors, this matters. Paintings signed Bihet or Perez in the same hand belong to the same body of work, and Sirvent's output is larger than the handful of pictures that have surfaced under his own name.

His Still Lifes

The subjects that survive are the classic French still-life repertoire, handled with academic restraint: oranges with a pewter plate, asparagus and strawberries against a dark ground, eggs, a lobster, a vanitas, a ham. The fruit is modelled slowly, the highlights are held back and the backgrounds are kept dark and atmospheric, so the subject comes forward into the light. Most of the recorded pictures are on canvas, several of them at standard French stretcher sizes.

A Painter's Record

1867 Living at 8 rue Coustou, Montmartre. Exhibits two paintings at the Paris Salon, nos. 1422 and 1423.
1892 Four fruit and oyster still lifes published in Paris as chromolithographs “after Sirvent,” including Panier de pêches.
1893 Joie et Tristesse sold at the Hôtel Drouot, 4–5 December.
1893–1894 Thirteen still lifes offered in Montreal under the name Bihet, and one farm picture under the name Perez.
1900 Deux Majestés sold at the Hôtel Drouot.

An Open File

His dates of birth and death have not yet been found, nor the record of his years as a student in Madrid. This page is an open file and grows as the record does. If you own a painting signed Sirvent, Bihet or Perez, or know of family papers from Jijona, we would be glad to hear from you.

Inquire About Available Works

Works by Leandro Sirvent come to the Eclection one at a time. View his still life of peaches in a woven basket, or Request a Private Viewing at the Morris building on East Fourth Street.

Sources

Explication des ouvrages de peinture… des artistes vivants, Salon de 1867, Paris, nos. 1422–1423; Musée d'Orsay, Base Salons.
L'Union médicale, “Promenade au Salon,” Paris, 1867.
Bibliographie de la France, Paris, 1892, prints section.
Société des Arts du Canada, Catalogue 1893–1894, Montreal.
Hôtel Drouot, Tableaux modernes, sale of 4–5 December 1893, lot 21.
Hôtel Drouot, 88 tableaux de Monticelli et des tableaux anciens & modernes, 1900, lot 230; H. Mireur, Dictionnaire des ventes d'art, vol. 7, 1911.