The tranquil world of Albert Marquet: French painter of Light

The text below is the excerpt of the book Albert Marquet (ISBN: 9781639198795), written by Mikhail Guerman, published by Parkstone International.

The first landscape we know of him was painted in 1896 in the Vosges. At that time, he did not seem to know the Impressionists. Soon he discovered Monet’s Haystacks at Durand-Ruel, then Cézanne, Van Gogh and Seurat. The “Femme nue sur la sellette“ (Naked woman in the spotlight) with its green background speckled with red (1898), the small still lifes with a coffee pot and Japanese stamp, which date from the same period and are quite high in tonality, bear witness to these changing influences. Mostly, however, Albert Marquet stayed in shades of grey and red.

Legend has it that this was done out of thrift, as he was poor at the time and was grinding his colours. When the Universal Exhibition was being prepared, he obtained employment with Jambon at his workshop and worked for 20 sous an hour in the stucco and staff work of the “Grand Palais“. Of the ten paintings he intended for the “Salon de la Nationale” in 1900 (it was his first show), only one, the View of Saint-Etienne du Mont, was fished out, thanks to the foresight of Charles Guérin, a post-impressionist painter who had also studied with Gustave Moreau at the l’École des Beaux-Arts. His consolation was that he was able to exhibit a significant ensemble (more than 12 works) at the “Indépendants” of 1901. Quai de la Tournelle, in which he had already found his own style, dates from 1902 when he was twenty-seven years old. Since 1925, Albert Marquet has also been creating watercolours. Drawing paper often replaces the canvas. Each of these works of art is a masterpiece in itself.

All these years, and those that followed, were years of friendship with Matisse, daily, so to speak (a watercolour from 1896 shows Matisse in a top hat, painting by the water). Their landscapes and still lifes are not without analogies. They draw inspiration from the same motifs, the streets of Arcueil or the Luxembourg Garden. They live in isolation, without contact with the group of old “Nabis”.

Charles Louis-Philippe was also one of Albert Marquet’s best confidants. He wrote the famous novel Bubu de Montparnasse, published in 1901, which realistically portrays prostitution. Albert Marquet’s contradictions in his nature are calmed by this homogeneous block that stands firm on the asphalt and represents a refuge in the midst of the storms.

Life is hard. For three hundred francs, a police commissioner – an art lover – bought a carload of one hundred bought a carload of one hundred works by Albert Marquet. Henri Matisse, the spirited and already doctrinaire liaison between all the great forces of the day – Cézanne, Renoir, Pissarro – brings an element of stimulation and warmth to the small, quiet and determined man who never comments and only smiles briefly, as if embarrassed. Friendship benefits from such contrasts. Matisse, for his part, found something in Albert Marquet to alleviate his exaggerated preoccupation.

Nevertheless, this sphere of Albert Marquet’s creative activities is a good deal more important than it might seem. The somewhat Olympian lyricism inherent in Albert Marquet the landscapist unexpectedly gives way in his canvases to an impassioned expression of severely individualised, seemingly highly personal, emotions. It would be no exaggeration to say that Albert Marquet’s deeply private temperament found such powerful expression here, that it provides anyone familiar with Freud’s works with food for thought. Here, again, there are links with the emotional and artistic world of Cézanne, who was miracu lously able to combine severe asceticism and strong sensuali ty. There is no need to conduct psychoanalytical experiments on Albert Marquet’s paintings, but it would be prudish not to mention the obvious.

For the outside observer, the background in Paris was still undoubtedly formed by the exhibitions of the official Salons, both by virtue of the great number of works presented at them, the large number of participants, and because of the predominant interest of the critics in them and their influence on the art market. This situation endured right up until the end of the nineteenth century and it seemed that nothing, even in the future, would be powerful enough to shake this stronghold of the Academy. It is enough to recall how many of the Impressionists, who were opposed in principle to academic art, nevertheless, dreamt of getting into the Salon since that meant hope, if not of being bought, then at least of becoming known to a certain extent within the circle of potential patrons. The situation changed somewhat in the final years of the century. A great number of artists were working outside the circle of the Salon…

To get a better insight into Albert Marquet, please continue this exciting adventure by clicking on:

Ebook

Hardcover