Henri Eugène Augustin Le Sidaner was born on the island of Mauritius in 1862. Le Sidaner returned to France with his family in 1872. He began art studies at the age of 15 with the history painter Alexandre Desmit in Dunkerque and in 1882 entered Alexandre Cabanel's atelier at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Le Sidaner began exhibiting at the Salon des Artistes Francais in 1887.  His naturalistic figural groups set in Etaples were well received and won him trips to Italy and Holland. Le Sidaner exhibited in solo shows in Paris, London, Brussels and the United States. In 1930 he was made a professor at the Academie des Beaux-Arts and was named its president in 1937.

Le Sidaner's work is in the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Detroit Institute of the Arts, Michigan; Musee d'Art Modern, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Rome; Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City; Ashmolean Musem, Oxford, England; Phoenix Art Musem, Phoenix; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and The Tate Collection, London.