HENRI JEAN GUILLAUME MARTIN (French, 1860-1943). Charmille. Oil on canvas. 32-1/2 x 31-1/2 inches (82.6 x 80.0 cm). Sign... (Total: 2 Items)

Description

HENRI JEAN GUILLAUME MARTIN (French, 1860-1943)
Charmille
Oil on canvas
32-1/2 x 31-1/2 inches (82.6 x 80.0 cm)
Signed lower left: Henri Martin
Unfinished painting of sail boats on a beach on the canvas verso

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE TEXAS ESTATE

PROVENANCE:
Findlay Galleries, Inc., New York (label verso);
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John R. McFarlin.

NOTE:
This work is accompanied by a folio comprising an essay on the artist, a certificate of authenticity from Findlay Galleries, Inc., signed and dated October 1965, as well as a black and white photocopy of the painting with a handwritten letter of authentication from Andre Schoeller, Jr. on the verso, signed, stamped and dated May 5, 1965.


One of the most distinctive and poetic painters belonging to the second generation of French Impressionists was Henri Martin. He carried with him into the middle decades of the 20th century the shimmering, softly fused and radiant vitality of impressionistic brushwork and the highly-keyed palette which his forebears Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir had used to such electric advantage a generation earlier. As with the early Impressionists, Henri Martin's goal seemed to be to capture the atmospheric and emotional qualities of the French countryside at different times of day and at various seasons of the year. The present work, painted after 1900 at his summer home, Marquayrol, in southwestern France, is a fine example of Martin's ability to create intricately patterned architectural and natural forms upon a powerful compositional armature. His pointillist technique imparts both an intense stillness and sense of tranquil order to his compositions regardless of motif.

The artist's extraordinary skill as a colorist sometimes downplays his considerable gifts as a draftsman who had honed his skills under Jean-Paul Laurens at the Academie Julian in Paris. In the present work depicting the pergola at Marquayrol, the complexities of foreshortening the round stone table and achieving the convincing perspective on the various elements of the landscape architecture are deceptively simple owing to Martin's reductive approach. However, if his drawing was even slightly off, the entire composition would completely fall apart. The simplicity of his forms, and the rigor with which they are drawn, enabled him to give them an almost magical grandeur of colorful, illuminated surface detail with his tiny network of brushwork. It is no wonder that even during his lifetime, Henri Martin was highly regarded as a major talent. Indeed, he was frequently acclaimed as one of France's greatest living painters.


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