Henri Martin

Private collection, France
Acquired by the present owner from the above

London, Kaplan Gallery, no. 33 (label on verso)

Henri Martin is one of the most famous French Impressionist painters, whose landscapes and coastal views painted out of doors, en plein air, display an unparalleled brilliance and luminosity. Here, his distinctive pointillist technique of applying paint in small dots and dabs perfectly captures the effect of the sunlight on the ocean spray. Martin gained early success in Paris, exhibiting at the annual Paris Salon, and at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1900. The purchase of Marquayrol, a house in Labastide-du-Vert in south-western France, marked a turning point in the artist’s career. Here, he was able to indulge in his love of painting nature, while making frequent trips to the coast to paint the sea. Jacques Martin-Ferrières, the artist's son, notes that: ‘Henri Martin was without contest an Impressionist and one who had the deepest sensitivity, certainly equal to that of Claude Monet, whom he most admired. Their interpretation of nature is a poetical evocation hewn from a thousand colours.’ (Jacques Martin-Ferrières, Henri Martin, Paris, 1967, p. 35). The influence of Japanese woodcuts, so fashionable in Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, is also very much in evidence in compositions such as the present one.