Lot 15
HENRI-JEAN GUILLAUME MARTIN (FRENCH 1860-1943)
PAYSAGE-CRÉPUSCULE, c.1890
Auction: MODERN MADE | Lots 1 - 422 | Fri 01 May at 10am
Description
signed (lower left), oil on canvas
Dimensions
55.5cm x 67.5cm (21 7/8in x 26 5/8in)
Provenance
A. Guinchard & F. Fourniret, Paris;
Private collection, from whom acquired by the present owner, 2017.
Footnote
Martin’s Paysage Crépuscule was painted relatively early on in his long and distinguished career, although after he had already achieved his breakthrough at the Paris Salon (at the time, the key measure of success), with his first medal awarded in 1883, followed by a solo exhibition in 1886. Critics and the public were enamoured with Martin’s eclectic style that took in hints of Impressionism (by then well established) and the more recent experiments in Pointillism that had pushed Impressionism closer to abstraction, combining it with an atmosphere more redolent of Puvis de Chavannes and the Symbolists, which lends his work a dream-like quality. Paysage Crépuscule is a perfect example of this: it has none of the bright dryness of Seurat, the dots of colour don’t sit still with optic precision, rather they move and sway as if held on a breeze. And Martin’s choice of dusk lends a narcotic heaviness to the trees and the grass. It’s as if a storm - of which there is no sign in the clear blue sky – is gathering within the woods, drawing the grass of the field into its thrall. Dusk is, of course, the witching hour, so beloved of Magritte, when the sky remains in the day, whilst the earth had fallen into night –something that the French crépuscule seems to capture better than its English translation. dusk. It is the perfect time for an artist like Martin, who wanted to imbue landscape with a certain strangeness, to fill it with mystery.