Albert Marquet

Alex Maguy (Galerie de l'Elysee), Paris
Acquired from the above in 1961

Honfleur, Le Grenier à Sel, Exposition A. Marquet, 1875-1947, De Paris à la mer, 1966, no. 11

Canvas is not lined. Surface is clean. Under UV light: there are two small spots of inpainting below the upper left corner, one pindot of inpainting at the center of the left edge, and stroke at the bottom of the left edge. A few strokes are visible in the extreme lower left corner to address prior frame abrasion. In addition, there is an area of scattered strokes of inpainting approximately 4 in. by 2 in. just to the left of the center of the right edge. Apart from a few other scattered pindot retouches, the work is in good condition.
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According to the artist's wife, "The dream of Marquet was to be the invisible but ever-present witness, a witness who missed nothing and who knew, without a system or an apparent plan, how to disencumber things from that which weighted them down and deformed them, so as to arrive at their essential truth" (quoted in David F. Setford, Albert Marquet: from Fauvism to Impressionism, New York, 2001, p. 7). In Marquet's Méricourt, Temps Gris the artist succeeds in this sense, encapsulating the emotional pall of an overcast day in eloquent tones.

Raymond Cogniate writes, "In [Marquet's] work, sky and water are not shimmering, but have a material reality while remaining light and transparent: this space is given an almost palpable existence" (Raymond Cogniate, in Albert Marquet, 1875-1974 (exhibition catalogue), Wildenstein, London, 1972, p. 5).  This prodigious talent is clearly illustrated in the broad swaths of green used to depict the trees, creating the sense that the vibrancy of the hillside sinks into the small river that has absorbed the murky mist of the sky.  The delicacy of the interplay of such atmospheric conditions and emotional resonance is profound, and speaks to the bold originality of Marquet's style which distinguished him so pointedly from his Impressionistic peers.