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Lot Essay
This work is accompanied by an original Attestation of Inclusion from the Wildenstein Institute, and it will be included in the forthcoming Albert Marquet Digital Catalogue Raisonné, currently being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, Inc.
‘It is marvellous, is your Midi sun!’ – Albert Marquet (quoted in J. Freeman, The Fauve Landscape, exh. cat., Los Angeles & New York, 1990, p. 32)
On the 12th of May, 1905, Albert Marquet departed Paris for the South of France, bound for the sleepy fishing village of Saint Tropez. While Marquet had been invited to stay with his friend Henri Manguin and his family at the villa they had rented for the summer, his journey to the Mediterranean coast was largely inspired by the travels of another artist friend – Henri Matisse, who had spent the summer of 1904 in Saint Tropez. Indeed, Marquet had intended to accompany Matisse on this seminal sojourn, but had been forced to pull out at the last minute due to a lack of funds. However, upon seeing the dramatic impact of the location’s bright light, intense colours and lush landscape on Matisse’s paintings, Marquet became determined to make his own journey south to the Mediterranean coast as soon as possible. Thanks to several auspicious sales during the spring of 1905, he was soon able to realise his goal, and arrived in Saint Tropez in the middle of May. Although he stayed with Manguin for the first few days of his trip, he soon found the quiet solitude of the family’s villa on the outskirts of town overwhelming, and moved to the centre of Saint Tropez instead, taking a room at the Hôtel Sube close to the harbour. From here, Marquet was able to immerse himself in the hustle and bustle of life in the heart of the town, enjoying a spectacular view from the balcony adjoining his room of the comings and goings of the fishing boats and locals alike. Painted during this heady summer, Marché à Saint-Tropez, la Place aux Herbes captures a sense of the stimulating atmosphere Marquet discovered on his ramblings through the town, focusing on a typical small market in a quiet, sun-drenched square. During his student days, sketching in the streets of Paris had been a daily routine for Marquet, one which he persuaded his friends Matisse and Manguin to join him on, and he was continuously fascinated by the fleeting snippets of everyday life he witnessed as he strolled through a crowd, a harbour, a city.
Rather than adopting an expansive, elevated view of the scene, which would become a typical feature of Marquet’s landscapes in the ensuing years, in Marché à Saint-Tropez, la Place aux Herbes the artist places himself at ground level, offering a brief snapshot of the scene, as if he is hiding, unobserved in a shady corner of the square or was simply passing by at the end of the street, when the view caught his eye. Only one figure appears aware of his watchful presence, the young girl in the pink dress and sunhat who raises her head as if to look directly at the artist. The rest of the crowd are lost in their own world – from the woman at the top of the stairs bent over a bucket, washing clothes, to the man in a yellow hat sitting against the wall, stretching his legs out as he shelters under the striped awning, and the young women who browse through the wares on offer. Rendered in a dazzling array of brief, rectangular, mosaic-like brushstrokes, each laden with pigment, there is a spontaneity to the composition, as if Marquet has committed the scene to canvas as quickly as possible, before the light shifts, the people disperse, and the quiet magic of the scene before him vanishes.
In truth, it was the effect of the intense sunlight on the colours of the landscape, the dazzling luminosity and radiance of the Mediterranean light, which captured Marquet’s imagination during his stay in Saint Tropez. Unlike his fellow Fauves - Vlaminck, Derain and Matisse – Marquet’s palette remained resolutely tied to the real world, inspired solely by the dazzling colour effects he discovered in his nuanced observations of natural light. As a result, his exposure to the sun-drenched vistas of the Midi proved transformative to his painterly style, ushering in a period of bold, adventurous experimentation with colour that reverberates with the artist’s fervent energy. In Marché à Saint-Tropez, la Place aux Herbes, a stream of blazing sunlight cuts diagonally across the façade of the building on the opposite side of the square, transforming the flat, cream painted wall into a tessellated pattern of incandescent, unmixed colours, from mint green to soft ochre, sky blue to various shades of lilac, and even fuchsia pink. Offset by the deep shadows in the shaded portion of the square, this dynamic play of colour enlivens the entire scene, becoming an effusive celebration of the brilliant sunlight and inspiring environment that Marquet discovered in Saint Tropez.
‘It is marvellous, is your Midi sun!’ – Albert Marquet (quoted in J. Freeman, The Fauve Landscape, exh. cat., Los Angeles & New York, 1990, p. 32)
On the 12th of May, 1905, Albert Marquet departed Paris for the South of France, bound for the sleepy fishing village of Saint Tropez. While Marquet had been invited to stay with his friend Henri Manguin and his family at the villa they had rented for the summer, his journey to the Mediterranean coast was largely inspired by the travels of another artist friend – Henri Matisse, who had spent the summer of 1904 in Saint Tropez. Indeed, Marquet had intended to accompany Matisse on this seminal sojourn, but had been forced to pull out at the last minute due to a lack of funds. However, upon seeing the dramatic impact of the location’s bright light, intense colours and lush landscape on Matisse’s paintings, Marquet became determined to make his own journey south to the Mediterranean coast as soon as possible. Thanks to several auspicious sales during the spring of 1905, he was soon able to realise his goal, and arrived in Saint Tropez in the middle of May. Although he stayed with Manguin for the first few days of his trip, he soon found the quiet solitude of the family’s villa on the outskirts of town overwhelming, and moved to the centre of Saint Tropez instead, taking a room at the Hôtel Sube close to the harbour. From here, Marquet was able to immerse himself in the hustle and bustle of life in the heart of the town, enjoying a spectacular view from the balcony adjoining his room of the comings and goings of the fishing boats and locals alike. Painted during this heady summer, Marché à Saint-Tropez, la Place aux Herbes captures a sense of the stimulating atmosphere Marquet discovered on his ramblings through the town, focusing on a typical small market in a quiet, sun-drenched square. During his student days, sketching in the streets of Paris had been a daily routine for Marquet, one which he persuaded his friends Matisse and Manguin to join him on, and he was continuously fascinated by the fleeting snippets of everyday life he witnessed as he strolled through a crowd, a harbour, a city.
Rather than adopting an expansive, elevated view of the scene, which would become a typical feature of Marquet’s landscapes in the ensuing years, in Marché à Saint-Tropez, la Place aux Herbes the artist places himself at ground level, offering a brief snapshot of the scene, as if he is hiding, unobserved in a shady corner of the square or was simply passing by at the end of the street, when the view caught his eye. Only one figure appears aware of his watchful presence, the young girl in the pink dress and sunhat who raises her head as if to look directly at the artist. The rest of the crowd are lost in their own world – from the woman at the top of the stairs bent over a bucket, washing clothes, to the man in a yellow hat sitting against the wall, stretching his legs out as he shelters under the striped awning, and the young women who browse through the wares on offer. Rendered in a dazzling array of brief, rectangular, mosaic-like brushstrokes, each laden with pigment, there is a spontaneity to the composition, as if Marquet has committed the scene to canvas as quickly as possible, before the light shifts, the people disperse, and the quiet magic of the scene before him vanishes.
In truth, it was the effect of the intense sunlight on the colours of the landscape, the dazzling luminosity and radiance of the Mediterranean light, which captured Marquet’s imagination during his stay in Saint Tropez. Unlike his fellow Fauves - Vlaminck, Derain and Matisse – Marquet’s palette remained resolutely tied to the real world, inspired solely by the dazzling colour effects he discovered in his nuanced observations of natural light. As a result, his exposure to the sun-drenched vistas of the Midi proved transformative to his painterly style, ushering in a period of bold, adventurous experimentation with colour that reverberates with the artist’s fervent energy. In Marché à Saint-Tropez, la Place aux Herbes, a stream of blazing sunlight cuts diagonally across the façade of the building on the opposite side of the square, transforming the flat, cream painted wall into a tessellated pattern of incandescent, unmixed colours, from mint green to soft ochre, sky blue to various shades of lilac, and even fuchsia pink. Offset by the deep shadows in the shaded portion of the square, this dynamic play of colour enlivens the entire scene, becoming an effusive celebration of the brilliant sunlight and inspiring environment that Marquet discovered in Saint Tropez.