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Lot Essay
Marquet was born in 1875 in the great port city of Bordeaux. Although he left Bordeaux at fifteen-years-old in order to pursue his artistic career in Paris, the motif of the port, with its grand structures, play of light on water and bustling commerce, retained an enduring fascination for Marquet. In the years around 1910, as Marquet was just beginning to win an audience for his art, when he was not scouring the quais of Paris for a subject for a painting, he was often travelling around the ports of Europe and North Africa - Hamburg, Naples, Rotterdam, Le Havre, Algiers, Tunis - in search of a motif.
The small fishing town of La Rochelle had been a popular destination and source of inspiration for many artists and the colour and atmosphere naturally attracted Marquet's brush. The present lot displays his characteristic play of vertical and horizontal axes through the colourful boats nestled in the harbour, offering up the careful geometry that informs much of Marquet's output. The glowing light that we encounter in this work reaches deep into the essence of Marquet's art. Writing in 1913, Marcel Sembat, a member of the French parliament and early supporter of Picasso in his Cubist experiments, commented: 'No artist has the same relationship with light as Marquet. It is as if he owned it. He possesses the secret of a pure and intense light which fills all the sky with its uniform and colourless glow ... Luminous as daylight itself and so transparent that a painting by Marquet gives the impression of a large window being opened onto the outside' (quoted in exh. cat., Marquet, New York, 1985, p. 6).
The small fishing town of La Rochelle had been a popular destination and source of inspiration for many artists and the colour and atmosphere naturally attracted Marquet's brush. The present lot displays his characteristic play of vertical and horizontal axes through the colourful boats nestled in the harbour, offering up the careful geometry that informs much of Marquet's output. The glowing light that we encounter in this work reaches deep into the essence of Marquet's art. Writing in 1913, Marcel Sembat, a member of the French parliament and early supporter of Picasso in his Cubist experiments, commented: 'No artist has the same relationship with light as Marquet. It is as if he owned it. He possesses the secret of a pure and intense light which fills all the sky with its uniform and colourless glow ... Luminous as daylight itself and so transparent that a painting by Marquet gives the impression of a large window being opened onto the outside' (quoted in exh. cat., Marquet, New York, 1985, p. 6).