Albert Marquet - Walking man, figurative art

Albert Marquet (Bordeaux 1875 – Paris 1947)
Woodcut by the French Fauvist Albert Marquet
Figurative, walking man
Title unknown
Signed “Marquet” at the bottom left of the print
Bottom right in pencil “Epreuve d'essai”, this is a proof print
Image size: 9 x 13 cm
Passepartout: 22 x 26.50 cm

Condition: the engraving by Albert Marquet is in good condition.
The woodcut has been deacidified (removed of brown discolouration) and is therefore in good condition.
Supplied with matching acid-free passepartout and acid-free back wall.

About the artist:

Pierre Léopold Albert (Albert) Marquet (Bordeaux, 27 March 1875 – Paris, 14 June 1947) was a French painter, draftsman, watercolourist and illustrator. Albert Marquet was a co-founder and important representative of Fauvism.

He arrived in Paris with his mother in 1890, where he studied at the École des arts décoratifs. In Paris he became friends with Henri Matisse. He then enrolled at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts and worked in the studio of Gustave Moreau.

Henri Evenepoel introduced him to the works of Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Vincent Van Gogh, Georges Seurat and others. He was carried away by the colour experiments of the Fauvists. His style would become definitive before the turn of the century. At a joint exhibition of the Fauvists in 1905, his work Now, this Fauve from 1898 caused a great sensation. As in the works of the other Fauvists, the application of pure, no longer illusionistic colour dominates here.

Later, however, Marquet turned away from the bright colours of the Fauvists. From 1906 onwards, his colours became increasingly nuanced. His favourite subjects were (river) landscapes and cityscapes, especially of harbour cities. Characteristic of his paintings are the strongly shifting compositions that are built up from bright colour planes. Nevertheless, the painter understood the art of enveloping his landscapes in an atmospheric atmosphere. The most beautiful examples of this are the Parisian winter views.

Albert Marquet lived and worked in Paris between his many travels, where he painted many views of his beloved Seine. In 1906, Albert Marquet worked with Raoul Dufy in Normandy and in 1907 he visited London with Henri Matisse and Charles Camoin. He also attended the Académie Ranson, founded in 1908, where Paul Sérusier taught. In 1914 he traveled to the Netherlands, where he painted the port of Rotterdam, among other things. The outbreak of the First World War put an end to this journey. In the 1910s he spent a lot of time with Yvonne, his favorite model. After the war he began traveling again through Europe and North Africa. In 1920 he met the writer Marcelle Martinet in Algeria, whom he married in 1923. The couple would spend almost all winters in Algeria and the neighboring countries. They also stayed in Algeria for almost the entire Second World War.

He was also an excellent watercolourist. His watercolour The Old Willemsspoorbrug, Rotterdam from 1925 was donated to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 1956 by Marcelle Marquet, the artist's widow. The Museum Boijmans devoted an exhibition to Marquet from 18 December 1955 to 5 February 1956. A major retrospective of Marquet's work was held at the Musée de l'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris from 25 to 21 August 2016.