MODERN MASTERS

Provenance

A. Guinchard & F. Fourniret, Paris                

Cyrille Martin has confirmed the authenticity of this work (photo-certificate).

Note: Henri Martin was born in 1860 in Toulouse, where he received a solid academic training at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which heavily influenced the first part of his artistic career. After years of submitting traditional paintings to the Salon, Martin received a grant to study in Italy where he became an admirer of Pre-Renaissance and Renaissance painters such as Giotto and Raphaël.Martin also became influenced by Seurat and the other Neo-Impressionist painters, which led him to briefly pursue a fusion of conservative academic imagery with the short divisionist brushwork of the French master and his followers. This period of stylistic soul searching led to several years of producing Symbolist works, which, in turn, led to the long series of mural commissions that made his name.However, the big change of Martin’s career came with his purchase of a property in Labastide-du-Vert in 1900: very quickly he abandoned the allegory and myth of Symbolist art and began to use nature as his inspiration. Alongside a continuous stream of mural commissions, he started to paint canvases in his now habitual Neo-Impressionist manner, predominantly of the countryside and villages in the south of France.Painted circa 1900, Paysage, crépuscule dates from a transitional period in which the artist appears to combine these two opposite stylistic natures. His use of fine, vibrant brushstrokes infuses the otherwise minimalist landscape with a mysterious intensity, typical of his Symbolist period. While the choice of a non-figurative, naturalistic subject suggests a shift from his early narrative works. Guided into this space by the specific placement of the trees, a sense of movement and infinity opens up for the viewer, imbuing the work with a very modern feel.