Henri Martin

Jacques Hinstin, Paris
Sale: Ader Picard Tajan, Tokyo, December 7, 1989, lot 16
Sale: Christie's, New York, May 11, 1994, lot 166
Private Collection
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Himeji, Himeji City Museum of Art; Tokyo, Tokyo Station Gallery; Ishikawa, Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art & Hekinan, Hekinan City Tatsukichi Fujii Museum of Contemporary Art, Emile Claus and Belgian Impressionism, 2013, no. 50, illustrated in color in the catalogue

The work is in very good condition. Canvas has been strip lined. Surface is very rich and the impasto is well preserved. The surface is slightly dirty, most notably in whites and lighter pigments though colors remain bright and fresh. Small minor lines of stable vertical craquelure are scattered throughout. Under UV light, certain original pigments fluoresce and there are a few nailhead spots of inpainting visible in the sky in upper left corner and toward right of upper center. There is a small 1/4 inch horizontal pigment loss in the sky toward top edge of center.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

In 1900, Henri Martin bought a property in Labastide du Vert, a small village near Toulouse in France's Midi-Pyrénées region. Marquayrol, a large seventeenth-century house overlooking the rolling thirty-acre property, would become not only Martin’s summer home but also the backdrop for his profound artistic revelation: surrounded by the French countryside, he abandons his early representations of allegory and myth and shifts his focus to depictions of nature. As the artist himself related: "My preoccupation with rendering atmospheric effects increased… 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).

A champion of Pointillism, Martin harnessed the technique’s ability to imbue his compositions with a joyous light, color, and texture. Jacques Martin-Ferrières, the artist's son, writes of the influence of the Impressionists in particular on his father’s mature oeuvre: “Their interpretation of nature is a poetical evocation hued by a thousand colors which certainly owes more to their utmost sensitivity to their surroundings than through research of a technical process" (Jacques Martin-Ferrières, Henri Martin, Paris, 1967, p. 35).