Henri Martin

Edmond Rostand, Cambo-les-Bains
Alon Zakaim Fine Art, London
Acquired from the above in 2009

Geneva, Petit Palais, Art in Service of Peace

Overall the work is in excellent condition. Canvas is not lined. Surface is clean. Its surface offers expanses of rich impasto and its pigments are bright and fresh throughout the composition. There are three or four scattered minor areas of retouching throughout the composition to address deeper cracks, the largest of which are towards the right edge of the canvas. These are no more than a few inches long. Thin, stable cracks throughout in some areas of thicker pigment, otherwise fine.
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Its extraordinary mural-like scale and masterful pointillist brushwork make the present work one of the masterpieces of Henri Martin's mature oeuvre, a period in which he abandoned allegory and myth and devoted himself to the representation of nature.

In 1900, Martin bought property in Labastide-du-Vert, a small village in France's Midi-Pyrenées region. On the thirty acres of land stood a large seventeenth-century house, named Marquayrol, which he would use as a summer residence. The acquisition of the property marked a turning point in Martin's career. As the artist described, "My preoccupation with rendering atmospheric effects increased later, after three months in the country, face to face with nature. Trying to capture its diverse effects, I was compelled to paint it differently. The natural light, now brilliant, then diffuse, which softened the contours of figures and landscape, powerfully obliged me to translate it any way I could, but other than using a loaded brush—through pointillé and the breaking up of tone" (quoted in Eden Close at Hand: The Paintings of Henri Martin (exhibition catalogue), Beverly Hills, 2005, p. 26).

The present work was painted near Marquayrol. It was here that the artist felt most at ease and it is therefore not surprising that the landscape inspired many of his most noteworthy compositions. La Joie de Vivre depicts a country promenade through the dells of le Midi on a sunny summer afternoon.  A couple strolls along a creek, trailing their grazing goats while the man plays music and the woman knits.  In the background, majestic and vividly colored poplars cast elegant shadows across verdant pastures while children play in the distance. 

La joie de vivre was first owned by Edmond Rostand, the French poet and writer best known for his play Cyrano de Bergerac.