Henri Martin

The village of Collioure, situated in the foothills of the Pyrenees not far from the Spanish border, already boasted a rich artistic tradition by the time Henri Martin settled there in 1923. As early as 1905, Signac, Matisse and Derain had incorporated the stunning Mediterranean light and deep pinks and browns of Collioure’s seaside buildings into their early fauve paintings. The appeal of Collioure both to the Fauvists and indeed to Martin himself lay in the remoteness of its location and its freedom from industrialisation, retaining a mythical, untouched quality; 'The tall, orangey-pink bell tower (instantly recognisable in so many of Matisse’s paintings, fig. I), was a converted lighthouse originally built, according to legend, by the arabs' (H. Spurling, The Unknown Matisse, A Life of Henri Matisse: The Early Years, 1869-1908, London, 1998, p. 299).

Martin was too much of an individual to have been constrained by the stringent tenets of Post-Impressionism as laid down by Seurat and Signac, yet this work represents both a confident and an original assimilation of their call for a carefully modulated palette combined with pictorial harmony and orchestration of line. What results is a scintillating exploration of the play of light on water and geometric shapes in a landscape. As such the present work represents one of Martin’s most accomplished paintings.

Comps:
415d06005_comp - Henri Matisse, Les Toits de Collioure

Fig. 1, Henri Matisse, Les Toits de Collioure, 1905, oil on canvas, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg