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Paul Sieffert
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Not to be confused with Paul Siefert.
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For homonymous articles, see Sieffert.
Paul Sieffert
Birth
November 11, 1874
Paris
Death
August 20, 1957 (at age 82)
Sevres
Nationality
French
Activities
Painter, illustrator
Training
French Academy in Rome (1902-1906)
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Paul René Eugène Sieffert born in Paris (11th)1 on November 11, 1874 and died in Sèvres on August 20, 19572,3 is a French painter and illustrator.
He is known for his nudes and portraits.
Biography
Paul Sieffert is a student of Jean-Léon Gérôme, Gabriel Guay and Albert Maignan. He exhibited at the Salon since 1894, and at the Society of Friends of the Arts of Bordeaux from 1910 to 1939. He won the first Grand Prix de Rome in painting in 1902 for The Resurrection of Jairus' Daughter, and an honorary diploma at the 1937 Universal Exhibition.
He is non-competition secretary of the Society of French Artists and a member of the committee and jury. He was named Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1931. He is a member of the committee of the Free Society of French Artists.
He also exhibited at the Winter Salon from 1910 to 1944.
He also became known for his stained glass windows, decorative compositions and illustrations of bibliophile works and collections of poetry, including Aux Flanches du Vase, followed by Polyphème and Unfinished Poems (1902) by Albert Samain.
His entire career was then based on his significant production of nudes, favoring elongated poses seen from behind.
Works in public collections
Dijon, Museum of Fine Arts: Bacchante, oil on wood, 42 × 34 cm.
Notes and references
His birth certificate (n°4793) in the birth registers of the civil status of the 11th arrondissement of Paris for the year 1874
Genealogical record [archive] on Filae
Marginal mention of death on his birth certificate
Albert Marquet is a French painter and designer born Mars 27, 1875 in Bordeaux and died June 14, 1947 in Paris.
Coming from a modest background, he was encouraged by his mother to train in Paris, where he became particularly close with Henri Matisse. Solidarity with the Fauve movement, he hardly allowed himself to be influenced by other currents of post-impressionism and, from the 1910s, enjoyed success which allowed him to make a comfortable living from his art. A great traveler, he traveled across France, Europe, the Maghreb and even the Middle East. From 1920, he left Paris every winter for Algiers, where he married Marcelle Martinet (1892-1984) in 1923, and where he spent the Second World War.
Apart from a few portraits and still lifes as well as a certain number of nudes and especially drawings, Marquet devotes himself to painting landscapes, natural or urban, often represented overhanging, with a strong presence of water. He paints on grounds and his repetitive subjects are reminiscent of the Impressionist series. Unlike these, however, he simplifies them, emphasizing the contours with a dark line, and treating them in flat areas of deliberately restrained colors, sometimes bright, sometimes neutral. This does not exclude great control of light. His technique aimed at synthesizing forms already made Léon Werth say that he was seeking to paint not the essence, but the essential.
Extremely abundant but not very evolving, the work evades comments all the more because its author, shy and taciturn, did not speak more about his work than about himself. His independence and his refusal of authority, which may have made him pass for autodidact, prohibit any classification, even if he has long been labeled as a “moderate Fauvist” or “late impressionist”.
Born at a time when the Impressionists were reviving landscape painting, Albert Marquet died at the same time as her. He contributed to transforming it but was eclipsed in this by Pierre Bonnard or Raoul Dufy, hence perhaps the relative oblivion into which the man who declared in 1936 fell: “I do not know how to write or speak but only to paint and draw. Look what I'm doing. Either I managed to express myself or I failed. In this case, whether you understand me or not, through your fault or mine, I cannot do more. »
Biography
Sepia photo showing docks with low buildings, people, carts, barrels and, in the background, tall ships on the water
Albert Marquet was born in Bordeaux near the quays (seen here around 1900).
Marquet wrote nothing apart from often laconic letters, but researchers have the archives of the Wildenstein Institute, which include those of his family and the Druet1 gallery. His youth remains little known until he came to Paris to study painting: information and testimonies then became more numerous, especially as his wife published travel accounts and portraitsa. Matisse defines him as “a fighter, solid on the ground”, despite his physical fragility3, and his friends appreciate his judgmentb. Both inhibited and extremely sociable, he likes distraction and has a caustic sense of humor: Marcel Sembat remembers him on the defensive5 but Jean Cassou notes that he knew how to show his cheerfulness with a wink or a smile6 , and André Rouveyre remembers the barbs he threw against people or institutions “while stamping gently with pleasure”7. “Albert Marquet is like his painting: calm, modest, without emphasis8”, and his life seems as smooth as the character, with no other mystery than his propensity for silence9.
Youth and beginnings (1875-1906)
Pierre-Léopold-Albert Marquet was officially born on Mars 27, 1875c at his parents' home, 114 rue Pelleport in Bordeaux. He is the only son of Joseph Marquet, a railway employee of Lorraine origin, and of a Girondine born Marguerite Deyres11, aged 40 and 26 respectively12. After a difficult childhood13, his studies in different Parisian art schools brought him into contact with the post-impressionist effervescence and those who would remain his dearest friends. Life is not easy for a young artist without resources3 but Marquet will trace his path, on the fringes of Fauvism14.
An early vocation
Portrait in warm tones depicting a middle-aged woman sewing, head down, a cat on her knees
The artist's mother painted by him around 1905-1906 (pastel on paper, 61 × 50 cm, Bordeaux Museum of Fine Arts.
With a temperament that is more secretive than solitary, Marquet as a child seems to have found in drawing an outlet for “his intimate suffering15”.
His childhood was not easy. Lively, with a strong tongue, he is frail16 and above all afflicted with a club foot which hinders his running and makes him mocked in the schoolyard. Moreover, his myopia is not corrected13. He escapes into the lively spectacle of the port of Bordeaux, and the Arcachon basin during family vacations in Teich or Arès (his mother's village, where he tends the cows)10. “He had suffered a lot from not being like the others,” assures his wife, who also emphasizes the material difficulties of the household2: the port was a real refuge for him, slipping between the barrels or bales of goods to see arriving and leaving the ships gave him the impression of living his only full and true moments17. From there undoubtedly, as well as emotional memories linked to his mother18, comes his fascination for water, boats, quays19.
All the less inclined to study as his teachers take him for a fool,10 the boy covers his sketchbooks and isolates himself in peace to draw. Marguerite, judging that he has dispositions, decides to support him in this path20. André Rouveyre would later pay tribute to the devotion of this mother whose kindness and finesse Matisse also appreciated7.
Black and white photo showing a busy street lined with trees and buildings, with people and horse-drawn carriages on the road
Rue Monge, in Paris, early 20th century.
In 1890, against the advice of her husband who could not give up his job and had little faith in her son's talent, she moved to the capital with the teenager, opening a business through the sale of a piece of land. boutique at 38 rue Monge, “Jours et Broderies”; both live on the fifth floor of the same building10. Enrolled at the School of Decorative Arts, Albert met Géo Dupuis, Marcel-Lenoir and above all, in October 189216, Henri Matisse. The latter, five years his senior, takes under his wing the young, self-conscious provincial, mocked for his accent and nicknamed "the Englishman" because of his brand new glasses: it is the beginning of a long artistic and of an unwavering friendship despite periods of estrangement13 — which some 200 letters attest3.
Matisse and Marquet left “the decorative arts” when they joined – one after the other and not without difficulty apparently – the Beaux-Arts of Parisd. From 1895 to his death in 1898, they followed the teaching without constraints of Gustave Moreau16. The old symbolist, revered by his students, defines himself as a "transmitter": he seeks to bring out their personality while encouraging them to work on technique21, and advises them to observe the spectacle of the street - method of sketching on the lively then in vogue22 — like rubbing shoulders with the great masters4. Marquet regularly goes to the Louvre to copy paintings by Titian, Poussin, Véronèse, Lorraine, Chardine.
At Moreau's studio, he and Matisse became friends with Henri Manguin and especially Charles Camoin: they remained united until the end of their lives23. The camaraderie will last less with the others (Jules Flandrin, Louis Valtat, Henri Evenepoel, Simon Bussy or Georges Rouault20), even if they spent evenings rebuilding the world at Café Procope11. After a brief stint at Fernand Cormon's course then at the Académie Julian, Marquet and Matisse attended the private Camillo academy, rue de Rennes11, where they received advice from Eugène Carrière, one of the thinkers of Social Art, who seeks to popularize artistic education by opening it to the street22; There they meet André Derain, Pierre Laprade, Jean Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck.
From this time on, Marquet continued to explore the city, drawing and painting in small format views of the Seine, the quays and the bridges13. He begins to take his revenge on life, analyzes Françoise Garciaf in an article where she links his aesthetic choices to his repressed rage, and which she entitles, borrowing from him this declaration: “At 20 I was ready to blow everything up »24.
Bohemia with Matisse
Black ink drawing of a man in bust and three-quarter face, with top hat and glasses
Matisse in top hat (c. 1900, Indian ink on paper, 36.5 × 27.5 cm, André-Malraux museum).
Marquet shares with Matisse ten years of learning — and poverty.
Both were moved in the evening of their lives by this youth where they supported each other in a destitution that Matisse, already married and father of a family, hid under a respectable facade. “We couldn’t afford a beer,” he said in 1925. Marquet was in such poverty that one day I was forced to claim the twenty francs that an amateur owed him. » Matisse remembers that, among other work, they were hired before the Universal Exhibition of 1900 to “brush garlands on the ceilings of the Grand Palais by the kilometer” — a grueling and underpaid task3. He also seems to be the originator of the rumor according to which Marquet started painting in gray because he did not have the means to buy colors, notably cadmium yellows and reds25,26.
Despite the grumpy character of Joseph Marquet who, once retired, joined his wife and child, Albert followed his parents in their moves to Avenue de Versailles (1903) then Quai des Grands-Augustins (1905). When his father died in 1906, he moved with his mother to Place Dauphineg. Apart from a few portraits of those around him – such as a cousin who stayed with them for a while and helped with the haberdashery28 – he painted what he saw from the windows, away from curious onlookers13. When he could, he rented a maid's room or a hotel room as a workshop: from 25 quai de la Tournelle, in 1902 he undertook the apses of Notre-Dame, as well as bridges and quays; from 1 rue Dauphine he continued his views of the Seine in 190429; a room occupied for a few months on the Quai du Louvre, in 1906, offered him a panorama from the Eiffel Tower to the Île de la Cité27. From his parents' apartment he represents the Quai des Grands-Augustins and sometimes, on the left, the Pont Neuf and the Louvre, sometimes, on the right, the Pont Saint-Michel and the cathedral27: showing them in all weathers and under all the lighting was undoubtedly inspired by the series of Rouen Cathedrals by Monet that Paul Durand-Ruel exhibited in 190430.
Painting showing in a simplified way in the foreground an oblique quay, then water and an island with buildings
The Seine and the apse of Notre-Dame (1902, oil on canvas, 54 × 72.5 cm, Troyes Museum of Modern Art.)
Painting diagonally representing a river bordered by white quays and ocher pavements with small figures; in the background, bridge and tormented sky
Le Quai des Grands Augustins (1905, oil on cardboard, 80 × 65 cm, National Museum of Modern Art).
Painting showing in a simplified way a river with quays, bridge, small figures and large square in front of a cathedral
Notre-Dame under the snow (1905, oil on canvas, 65 × 82 cm, Lausanne Museum of Fine Arts).
Painting in blues representing a slight overhang of a bridge slanting over a river, with black spots representing passers-by and vehicles, buildings blurred in the background and sun circled in red
The Seine at Pont-Neuf, fog effect (c. 1906, oil on canvas, 65 × 81 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy).
Painting showing in a contrast between white and dark colors a cart on a bridge, trees and various buildings in the distance
The Quai du Louvre and the Pont-Neuf in Paris (1906, oil on canvas, 60 × 71 cm, Hermitage Museum)
Information Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it.
During this period Marquet and Matisse always worked side by side, in class, in the Luxembourg Gardens, in Arcueil, in Saint-Cloud. Sometimes done in pastels but in bright colors31, their landscapes at the turn of the century demonstrate their common admiration for Cézanne. Marquet can't stand still and always drags Matisse out4. They try to capture street scenes, characters in full movement as quickly as possible: barges, cabs, cyclists, busy passers-by, laundresses, café-concert singers - so many sketches that Marquet puts in reserve to liven up his paintings32 . He excelled in these black and white exercises where economy of gesture and sureness of line mattered: Matisse later compared him to the Japanese “drawing madmen”, Hokusai in particular25,31. Both finally meet at Henri Manguin, the only one to have a workshop where several people can share the costs of a model: until Manguin leaves for Neuilly, all the notable artists of the early 20th century will have frequented his house at 61 rue Boursault, in the 17th arrondissement. Paintings from 1904-1905 where they paint each other in the act of painting bear witness to the emulation which made this place one of the crucibles of Fauvism33.
Under the wild banner
Rectangular beige cardboard surface oriented in height. Printed on it, characters and drawings, black and red
Cover of the catalog of the Salon d'Automne of 1905.
The preponderant role of Matisse in the movement overshadowed that of Marquet, who invested in it without fully committing to it31.
Among all the currents of post-impressionism, Fauvism emerged at the very beginning of the 20th century and died out in the 1910s, not without having revolutionized the chromatic approach in painting34. Joined by others, several former members of Gustave Moreau's workshop, Matisse and Marquet at the head31, entered into dissidence against academic rules in 189835 by developing the following principles: simplified forms, pure colors partitioned and placed in flat areas, detached from reality, more violent than those of the Nabis of the previous decade36.
Painting presenting in a lively and clear palette a foreground of vegetation, then an expanse of water, and in the background wooded hills
View of Agay presented at the 1905 salon (oil on canvas, 65 × 80 cm, National Museum of Modern Art).
From 1901 Marquet exhibited with the others at the Salon des Indépendants, and Claude Roger-Marx soon praised his “growing authority” among these powerful colorists inspired as much by Cézanne as by the old masters37. In 1902 Berthe Weill opened her gallery on rue Victor-Massé to “students of Gustave Moreau”, starting with Matisse and Marquet38: just like Eugène Druet, she was interested in the wild animals even before they earned their nickname at the Salon autumn of 190533. That year, in Room VII of the show which for two years has been offering young artists their chance, five paintings by Marquet appear among those by Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, Manguin and Camoini. The shapes and especially the colors cause a scandal: Camille Mauclair has the impression of a “pot of paint thrown in the face of the public” and Marcel Nicolle of “barbaric and naive games” of children39; Louis Vauxcelles, better disposed, still spoke of an “orgy of pure tones” and compared a statue of Albert Marque placed in the middle of the room to a “Donatello among the wild beasts”40.
Aware like his comrades that they needed visibility, Marquet was part of all the exhibitions and all the organizing committees31. However, he did not follow Matisse in his divisionist explorations alongside Paul Signac and André Derain, nor in his conceptualization of color as a vector of expressiveness: Matisse even recounts that one day in 1903, his friend painting with him in Luxembourg told him had ironically asked when seeing the colors of his painting what he would do if he had a parrot to add to it41. Marquet, who maintains a realistic approach, is already more attached to lines and values41; painting in the Fauve style consists for him of using pure tones while opposing, according to Roger-Marx, "a deaf resistance to what is a little forced and systematic in the colorful exaltation that his comrades cultivate ". He is criticized for “a sober Fauvism that appeals to the general public” (Gustave Coquiot), to those who like “wild animals transformed into house cats” (Tériade)42.
According to a perhaps excessive shortcut43 by Vauxcelles, Marquet had entered the “wild beast cage” “so as not to let go of his friends […], his aesthetic [being] the polar opposite of theirs”. He is nonetheless “forever enlisted in the movement40”.
Personal paths
Painting in light and luminous tones with corner of building in the foreground on the right, then quay with small figures, and in the distance bridge, buildings, silhouette of cathedral
Notre-Dame, soleil (1904, oil on canvas, 73 × 60 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau).
Rebellious but discreet, Marquet demonstrates his independence through his very silences, while remaining close to his friends44.
The same goes for his links with Fauvism as for his attraction to Japonism, visible through his formal conciseness or his bird's eye perspectives: he quickly emerges from them by capturing what he was sensitive to45. Likewise, he was subject to the diffuse influence of symbolist circles tinged with anarchism, through his masters Gustave Moreau and Eugène Carrière, his elders Odilon Redon or Félix Vallotton, or even his friends Maximilien Luce, Félix Fénéon, George Besson45: Above all, he draws from it the idea of a spontaneous painting, without filter, which stays away from classical culture and conceptual elaborations in order to remain as close as possible to reality and emotion46.
Painting representing from above and in neutral tones a lively street lined with buildings and strewn with flags where red dominates
July 14 in Le Havre (1906, oil on canvas, 80 × 64 cm, Albert-André museum).
Refractory to all authority without being an activist, Marquet established close links with the libertarian circles of the 1890s-1900s - which did not prevent him from joining a more classic anti-fascist left between the wars47. If he never clearly expressed his opinions44, “he has a side that is neither god nor master, neither jury nor reward”, summarizes Sophie Krebsk,l. The art critic Emil Szittya does not attribute to him the political radicalism of a Besson or a Fénéon, but a look whose benevolence tinged with irony emanates, according to him, from the same humanism46. Apollinaire said of Marquet in 1910: “This painter looks at nature with kindness. There is in him a little of the gentleness of Saint Francis48. »
From the turn of the century Marquet began taking vacations outside Paris, with family or friends, due to lack of money. In 1903 he stayed in Normandy with Henri Manguin and his family, before traveling the region in his company, from Falaise to Flamanville38. The following summer he stayed in Paris to refine a series of drawings intended to illustrate Bubu de Montparnasse, a novel by Charles-Louis Philippe, whom he perhaps met in 1901 at La Revue blanche: these illustrations, born from their strolls on the boulevards, were refused by the publisher to the great disappointment of Marquet and the writer49,50.
It was in 1905 that the painter discovered the Côte d'Azur. Following the habit of certain artists - such as Gauguin and Van Gogh - of going to work in the South in community 51, Henri Manguin rented a villa near Saint-Tropez: Marquet preferred a small hotel on the port where he spent more than time at the café to paint. Charles Camoin accompanies him to Signac as well as to the prostitutes from the Roses bar whom they pose on occasion. Marquet then left for Nice and Menton, then returned to see Cassis, Agay and Marseille52: all his life he felt in his element amidst the bustle of the Phocaean port and its surroundings53.
Always attracted, like the Impressionists, by the waters and lights of Normandy, in July 1906 he joined Raoul Dufy in Le Havre: from the balcony of their hotel they painted the streets and houses adorned with flags for the national holiday and set up their easel on Sainte-Adresse beach; in August they went to Honfleur, Trouville, Fécamp, Dieppe36.
The years 1905-1906 marked a turning point: Albert Marquet began to be known and emerged from his financial difficulties. The State, which bought Les Arbres in Billancourt in 1904, did it again the following year with Notre-Dame, soleil and in 1906 with Le Port de Fécamp52. Invited that year by the art historian Élie Faure to participate in the Belgian Salon de La Libre Esthétique, Marquet recommended his friend Matisse. On the sidelines of the shows, the gallery owners Berthe Weill, Eugène Druet and soon Bernheim-Jeune exhibited it among others19. An exclusive contract signed with Druet in 190552 and renewed in 1906 now protected him from need54.
Recognition (1907-1919)
Clear plaque all the way up with a number of names engraved in red under those, roughly, of Matisse and Marquet.
Marquet painted there for almost twenty-five years.
Marquet can now travel far, often with friends: he visits in a curious crossover the same places as Matisse before or after him56. The rest of the time he paints and his notoriety increases. He participated in exhibitions both in Paris and in other capitals, even during the First World War when he was demobilized: “Continue painting. No one in this area can replace you,” declared deputy collector Marcel Sembat to Matisse and Marquet57. This decade is also that of his bond with Yvonne, his favorite model35.
Friends, loves and pleasures
Albert Marquet does not work tirelessly: he likes to have fun and has a busy social life.
In 1908 he took over the lease of the small accommodation-workshop (a two-room kitchen58) vacated by Matisse opposite his home, on the 5th floor of 19 quai Saint-Michel - his friend moving back to the 4th in 1914. Although he regularly attended sketch classes at the Académie Ranson54 until the First World War, Marquet sometimes became bored when Matisse and, for example, Juan Gris launched into abstract discussions on art. Less serious than his elder - who nevertheless always cares about his judgment -, he allows himself to be distracted more easily and tempted, in his own words, by the pleasures of a "slutty libertine bachelor" that is hard to admit in front of Amélie Matisse56: in Marseille in particular, he frequents brothels with Camoin or George Besson. He was introduced to him in May 1910 by Francis Jourdain and their friendship took a truly intimate turn from 1917, only to cease with Marquet's death59. Both succeeded in taking Matisse on their southern escapades in 1915 and 1917o,60.
Black and white photograph depicting a man with a round head and glasses and a young blonde woman in a long dress seated close together on a sofa.
Albert and Ernestine-Yvonne around 1910, quai Saint-Michel.
During the winter of 1908-1909, Marquet returned to the study of the nude, neglected since his school years, by playing with softer colors and shadows partially masking the forms35. Among her models, Ernestine Bazin, known as Yvonne, is a lively and sassy young woman who knows how to make people laugh. Although he did not seem to feel much love for her and her friends did not hold her in high esteemp, they remained together until 1922q — Marquet also retained his freedom63. She inspired him to create paintings whose frontal eroticism, in which the painter's desire shines through, breaks with the more conventional poses of academic models35.
Drawing where a woman is silhouetted in black on a white background from behind embracing another person
Drawing from L'Académie des Dames.
At the same time, Marquet draws from the antics he witnesses in brothels - men and women or women together - a few paintings (Les Deux Amies) and a series of more or less crude erotic drawings, made in ink35 until the 1920s : they nourish the twenty prints of L'Académie des dames, published in 1930 with a poem by Verlaine, as well as other collections circulating more or less secretly64.
Marquet still painted a few portraits of loved ones around this time64 but much preferred the stimulating and infinite spectacle that his walks or what he saw from his windows gave him. Having fallen in love with Paris, he likes to daydream on the banks of the Seine or on café terraces; Matisse reproaches him for this idleness although he knows the artist is always on the lookout behind the stroller65.
Marquet plays billiards and chess61 — playing endless games with Camoin66 — and he is not the last to party. On Mars 21, 1914, a memorable costume ball took place in Van Dongen's workshop in Montparnasse: “Disguise is obligatory for men. Women are asked to be beautiful and scantily clad,” the invitation card stated. George Besson remembers, among the crowd of artists, writers, comedians, athletes or shady individuals, "Matisse, Marquet and Camoin, dressed as bearded popes, dancing Cossack style, vociferating and taking off their dresses to appear in pink swimsuits with misplaced muscles, arbitrarily distributed tufts of hair, and […] inscriptions designating frightful infirmities”67.
Marquet was thirty-nine years old when war was declared: he was mobilized and then discharged for health reasons. He experienced the anguish of the fall of 1914 in the company of Matisse. Wandering through the Latin Quarter with Van Dongen, they felt useless, worried about the fate of their friends who had gone to the front and organized themselves to send them parcels of food and clothing, in addition to abundant mail68. In 1915 Marquet helped, as far as he could, alumni of the Beaux-Arts on leave69. When they left Paris, he and Matisse took turns returning to watch over their respective workshops70. In November 1918, all the comrades celebrated the end of hostilities together in the capital71.
Travel
Marquet discovers himself an insatiable traveler - even if he works more irregularly.
In May 1907, Marquet, Charles Camoin and Othon Friesz explored London with great excitement. In mid-July, Marquet's second stay - staying in Soho, he got by without speaking English - was interrupted after a few days: the young man had to return to the bedside of his mother, who died in Teich on August 2572. Very affected, he went down to work in Ciboure and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. The following year he visited Italy with Henri Manguin, going as far as Rome then Naples73; he stops among others in Fiesole where there are Paul Signac but also Leo and Gertrude Stein, defenders of modern art and in particular of Fauvism. On his return Marquet goes to see Camoin in Cassis before resting from the heat in a hotel in Poissy54. The old medieval city, industrialized in the 19th century, has retained its charm and its taverns, suggesting several sketches and small-format paintings. In gray weather he fishes with Matisse who comes to join him74. Both decide to spend a week in Dakar before the Salon d'Automne73.
During the first months of 1909, Marquet was in Hamburg where Matisse provided him with contacts: cold, rain and snow did not prevent him from painting or drawing75 but he preferred his Parisian studio for the winters to come63. He subsequently visited the museums of Berlin, Dresden and Munich. Returning very tired, he nevertheless left in June for Naples - where he climbed Vesuvius75 - and Sicily, then in September for Tangier, with the writer Eugène Montfort; on their way back they stopped in Seville76. In 1910, a flu having spoiled another stay in London75, Marquet spent the summer with Manguin then Friesz in a rented villa in Villennes-sur-Seine, near Poissy. He then went with Matisse to Bavaria and Austria63.
Operated on for a hernia in November 1910, Marquet kept his room for a month and resumed nude painting to spare himself, especially since he was, according to his own words, “always between colds and rheumatism”75: he did not risk working outside again until April 1911, first in Paris where he painted the Church of the Trinity, then in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, Le Havre, Honfleur. But from the month of August he traveled across Morocco on horseback with Monfort, between Tetouan, Fez, Rabat and Casablanca. He only brought back a few gouaches, declaring to Matisse: “I will never be an orientalist”76. He nevertheless returned two years later to the south of Morocco, still with Montfort. His escapades in 1912 and 1913 took place otherwise in Normandy (Rouen, which he loved even in gray weather63), the South (Marseille, Toulon68), and Île-de-France (Champigny-sur-Marne, La- Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, Samois, Villennes-sur-Seine)77.
Painting in gray tones representing dark boats moored on a quay and others on the water spewing white smoke; in the background, some buildings
The Port of Hamburg (1909, oil on canvas, 64.5 × 79 cm, coll. private).
Painting in yellows representing some small sailboats and flat boats on the sea with the silhouette of two mountainous hills in the background
Vesuvius (c. 1909, oil on canvas, 61 × 80 cm, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts).
Painting representing a pointed arch treated in blue opening onto a very sunny sloping lane lined with fairly cubic white houses
The Citadel of Tangier (1913, oil on canvas, 40.5 × 32.5 cm, Grenoble museum).
Painting showing in the foreground a large oblique quay with small people and carts, then ships with masts and buildings in the background closing the harbor
The Port of Marseille (1916, oil on canvas, 50.5 × 61 cm, coll. private).
Painting showing in the foreground a very bright red boat on a large body of stagnant water with vegetation and water lilies, and in the background, trees and a blue sky
Samois, the red boat (1917, oil on canvas, 60 × 73 cm, coll. private).
Painting almost entirely occupied by a bouquet of dark trees reflected in the water, against a slightly foggy background
Swan Island (1919, oil on cardboard, 75 × 81 cm, National Museum of Modern Art).
Information Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it.
In May 1914 Marquet stayed in Rotterdam, from where he went to The Hague to contemplate the works of Rembrandt and Vermeer77. The war will slow down his movements. At the end of August 1914, he and Matisse left for Collioure, then for Céret with Étienne Terrus and Juan Gris, where they met the sculptor Manolo Hugué57; worry brings them back to Paris in November. After that - apart from a trip to Barcelona and the Balearic Islands in April 1917 where he seems to have had fun without working much - Marquet spent the entire war either with Besson or with Matisse, between Paris, which he fled during the bombings71, and various towns from the Paris region, and Marseille where he occupied the apartment in Montfort, when he did not settle in l'Estaque78.
The painter's successes
Black and white photo of a large corner building on the left, on a square with passers-by, and columns on the right
Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, 1910.
The enthusiasm aroused by the works of Albert Marquet is manifested by the growing interest of collectors and exhibitions in France and elsewhere.
Marquet continued to participate throughout the years in the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants. He is often exhibited with others in the galleries of Berthe Weill, Bernheim-Jeune, Eugène Blot - who associated him with Camille Claudel in November 190754. Eugène Druet places him in the third of the four groups of artists highlighted during his "Annual Exhibition", and includes him among the painters whose drawings and watercolors he shows in January 1912: the critic René-Jean compares the landscapes with the pen of Marquet “with the beautiful sepias of Nicolas Poussin”76.
Painting showing boats and sailboats on the water, with two mountainous hillocks in the background
The Port of Naples (1909, oil on canvas, 63.5 × 76.5 cm, Besançon Museum of Fine Arts).
The Le Havre Modern Art Circle, where his works have been hung regularly since 1906, also became one of Marquet's favorite places, who will also be represented in the artistic section of the Lyon International Exhibition between May and November. 191468.
In 1907 Druet offered him his first monographic exhibition: thirty-nine paintings were visible in February on rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré; fifty-three were in the gallery on rue Royale in May 1910 and forty-seven again in April 1913, earning him praise in Le Figaro, Gil Blas and Comœdia63,77.
Artistic events became rare during the war, but Marquet exhibited in Mars 1916 at the Jeu de Paume, for the Salon de la Triennale, and offered paintings for exhibitions and sales for the benefit of artists or victims of the war. It was there that in 1917 Claude Monet bought The Port of Naples from him, urgently inviting him to visit him in Giverny with Matisse79.
Marquet's works are also popular abroad. After a traveling exhibition from Mars to November 1907 (Vienna, Budapest, Prague), they were shown the following spring during several events in Liège, Moscow (Tretyakov Gallery) and Berlin - within the framework of the Secession54 to which he sent again paintings from 1911 to 1913. From 1909 he appeared in many international collective exhibitions: Saint Petersburg (at the initiative of the magazine Apollon), Kiev, Riga, Odessa, Prague, Cologne, London, Brussels, Winterthur, Ghent (for the Universal Exhibition of 1913), and finally, thanks to Druet, New York, Boston and Chicago (for the “Armory Show” taking place from February to May 1913)77. In the spring of 1916, Walter Halvorsen, a former painter turned art dealer, was guided by Matisse and Marquet, whose studio he visited, to choose works by various artists to bring back to Norway69.
Painting depicting a roadway lined with trees and silhouettes of sunny buildings, with a play of shadows
Quai du Louvre and Pont-Neuf (1906, oil on canvas, 60 × 73 cm, coll. Morozov, Hermitage Museum).
Painting in beige tones showing a quay with barracks and two columns of smoke, one black, one white; in the background, passers-by and vehicles on a bridge
The Pont Saint-Michel in winter (1908-1909, oil on canvas, 61 × 81 cm, coll. Shchukin, Pushkin Museum).
Painting showing in the background buildings and bell towers against a hazy sky, with a large factory chimney on the left, and in front of a red and black tugboat on orange water
The Port of Hamburg (1909, oil on canvas, 66.5 × 80 cm, coll. Shchukin, Hermitage Museum).
Information Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it.
Marquet sold some paintings in 1907 to Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, dealer of the Russian collector Ivan Morozov; he is also advised by Ambroise Vollard, Durand-Ruel and Druet, the latter two also being in contact with Sergei Shchukin: the painter thus sells to each of these great Russian lovers of modern art a good number of works between 1908 and 191378. Saddened by the sudden death of Eugène Druet in January 1916, he saw his contract renewed for three years by his widow and signed another with Bernheim-Jeune69.
At the beginning of 1918 then again in the spring of 1919 when Marquet went down to Nice to treat a bad flu, Matisse accompanied him to Cagnes-sur-Mer to see Renoir and they made excursions into the hinterland71. Marquet completed his recovery by spending the summer painting but also swimming, fishing, canoeing or walking in Herblay-sur-Seine. Suffering from the flu again at the end of 1919, he decided, on the advice of his doctor and friend Élie Faure, to seek the sun in Algeria61.
Between Paris and Algiers (1920-1939)
Colored photo of a quay and harbor with ships, surrounded by white buildings
Algiers around 1900: the port and the Admiralty. Anonymous colorized photograph, preserved at the Library of Congress, Washington.
In Algiers, Albert Marquet met Marcelle Martinet, a pied-noir: married three years later and living in Paris, they returned to Algeria almost every year until the Second World War. They also travel a lot elsewhere abroad, without disdaining the resorts that France offers, notably, at the end, La Frette-sur-Seine which the painter adores. Relieved by his wife of material concerns, he had plenty of time to work78: the 1930s marked his consecration80.
A happy union
“He horrified, as if it were a lie, what took on the appearance of the definitive,” writes Marcelle Marquet81: the artist, however, never left the friend and companion he had found in her at forty-five. years.
In January 1920 Marquet arrived in Algiers with letters of recommendation. His arrival was announced by Druet's wife to Louis Méley, an industrial art collector: if Marquet took up residence in a furnished apartment then at the "Royal Hôtel" from where he overlooks the port and the bay, Méley received him at his table, prepares excursions for him and introduces him to the students of the Villa Abd-el-Tif, a sort of Villa Medici where the painter became friends with the young Jean Launois whose drawings he admired82,83. It was also by mail that he was introduced to Marcelle Martinet, born in Boufarik twenty-eight years earlier.
The artist immediately sympathizes with this fine and cultured young woman who has talents as a storyteller. She serves as his guide in the city and the Casbah of Algiers before he goes on a two-week tour of the Sahara, perhaps to escape the attentions of a certain Adèle66, from which he returns dazzled83. Returning to France at the end of May, during the summer he began a correspondence with Marcelle, from La Rochelle where he had joined Signac: she was able to gain the trust of this shy man who was difficult to open up61.
Marquet returned to Algeria the following winter and continued his discovery of the North-Saharan towns and oases (Laghouat, Ghardaïa and Mzab, Biskra, Touggourt82) with a train or bus tour with Jean Launois and Marcelle, who speaks a little Arabic66 . The young painter having praised Sables-d'Olonne to him, Marquet settled there all summer with Yvonne and worked a lot, among others on views of La Chaume66. He passed his driving test and bought a Ford behind the wheel of which he would now travel the roads84 “with clumsiness and recklessness85”. At the beginning of 1922, in the Sahara, camel treks with Launois and Marcelle took them to Tunisia. Back in Paris, Marquet painted views of Notre-Dame. He decides to break up with Yvonne at the end of the year86.
Painting representing in the foreground on the right a section of a house, overlooking a bay with the sea and a rather blurry town
View of the Casbah (1920, oil on canvas, 33.5 × 40.5 cm, coll. private).
Painting of an arch with figures crouching in the shade and others in full sun in front of white houses
Ghardaïa, the arcades (1921, oil on canvas, 33 × 41 cm, coll. private).
Watercolor depicting white walls with some characters, and behind greenery and palm trees
Laghouat (date?, watercolor, 16.5 × 25 cm, coll. private).
Painting showing white houses with a tower, some dark trees, and in the background a blue expanse in front of hills
Minaret in Sidi Bou Saïd (1923, oil on panel, 22 × 27 cm, coll. private).
Information Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it.
Bust-length portrait of a woman facing the front, calm demeanor, wide mouth, medium-length, slightly braided brown hair
Portrait of Marcelle by Marquet (1931, oil on canvas, 61 × 50 cm, Bordeaux Museum of Fine Arts).
The marriage of Albert Marquet and Marcelle Martinet was celebrated in Algiers on February 10, 1923 and they continued their Tunisian honeymoon in Sidi Bou Saïd. When they arrived in Paris at the end of October after a detour through Grenoble and Burgundy86, they lived in the small, uncomfortable accommodation on the Quai Saint-Michel. They only left it in 1931, for a large apartment overlooking the Pont Neuf at the corner of rue Dauphine and quai des Grands-Augustins - the same place where the young Marquet had rented in a hotel that has since been demolished. To the notary who asked him why such a purchase, when they had no contribution87, Marquet replied: “Because of the windows… without thinking for a second,” adds his wife, “that this reason provided, obvious to him, could seem surprising to someone else”88. He will never stop painting the Pont-Neuf and the quays from the angles offered by the facade windows.
The move-in takes place at the end of August after months of work. The artist insisted on decorating the bathroom himself with maritime landscapes seen during his travels, imitating azulejos. In the workshop of his friend the ceramist Josep Llorens i Artigas in Charenton, he painted the 30 × 30 cm tiles which are grouped in the central panels or surround them like a frieze,89.
Marcelle Marquet soon wisely managed her husband's career (negotiation of contracts, organization of exhibitions, sale of works) as well as the correspondence which had always weighed on him: he reserved the mail for intimates, for Matisse in any case90 . She gets along very well with the wives of her best friends, whom she keeps informed of the couple's movements84. His own literary projects took shape in association with him: in 1925 Georges Crès, under the pseudonym Marcelle Marty, published a story entitled Moussa, le petit noir, embellished with eighteen black drawings and five watercolors signed Albert Marquet91 ,s.
Marcelle has always put up with Albert's withdrawn and even confusing character. “He took his place among the others, happy that he was not singled out, undoubtedly aware that by drawing attention to himself, he would have lost the space and freedom that were necessary for him,” she analyzes -she in 1951 in the preface to her first work on him. Likewise, she had understood him perfectly when he replied to her, one day when she was worried that his constant presence might bother him: “No, with you I can be alone. »93
Paint and see the world
Albert and Marcelle Marquet share the same need to move. A “discreet adventurer85” ready for the greatest discomfort, the painter seeks in travel, according to his wife, to escape unwelcome people94, to live without obligation, and to sharpen his sense of observation95.
Algiers and North Africa
For almost twenty years, except in 1931 and 1938, the Marquets took up their winter quarters in Algeria.
Painting showing a landscape with a foreground of overhanging vegetation, then houses and in the background a rounded bay overlooking the sea
The Bay of Algiers (1932, oil on canvas, 65.5 × 81 cm, coll. private).
“Marquet knew that I was very attached to my country and that he would not lack the motifs to paint,” writes Marcelle, who needs to recharge her batteries periodically in the Mediterranean96. They usually leave between December and January: when they do not embark from Marseille, they cross Spain and Morocco, always by car, a Buick from 1926, then again a Ford the journeys are interspersed with tourist stops of varying length91.
Painting representing in its middle a strip of land with houses in front of hills reflected in the water
The Lake of Tunis (1926, oil on canvas, 60.5 × 81 cm, coll. private).
The couple first stopped for several weeks in Algiers, where Marquet tirelessly painted the monuments, the surrounding landscapes, and especially the port. They stayed in hotels or in rented villas - only buying a house on the hills in the fall of 194097. From there they can choose to go elsewhere in Algeria, or to the protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia.
Thus in 1925, Marquet spent two months in the port of Bougie with Jean Launois and other painters from the Villa Abd-el-Tif (Étienne Bouchaud, Marius de Buzon, Eugène Corneau)84, making excursions with them to Laghouat, Ghardaïa, Bou Saâda86. At the beginning of 1926 he rented a house for several weeks on the port of La Goulette: he liked it there more than in Carthage where there was, he said, "no prominent place, barely enough for three or four tables98”.
The winter of 1929 saw him return to the Algerian Sahara, which inspired his drawings and watercolors99. In 1934 he represented Algiers under the snow but left to indulge in the pleasures of skiing. It was this year and the following that he and Marcelle visited Morocco more thoroughly, staying notably in Marrakech and Rabat92, where a house was made available to them with a terrace opening onto the Kasbah des Oudayas and the mouth of the Bouregreg85. In Mars 1939 they explored the Aurès massif100.
The other years, at least those of major trips elsewhere in the world, they remained in Algiers: Marquet was content, for example, in 1927 to paint the port and the Place du Government from his balcony of the Hôtel de la Régence91.
French shores and loops of the Seine
Painting depicting a large body of water with a few boats and houses behind it
The port of Audierne, 1928, coll. private.
In mainland France, often with friends, the Marquets are constantly out and about, almost always by the water, sea or river.
Some summers, spacious rentals are planned that can accommodate Marcelle's family. The summer holidays of 1929, for example, were spent in games, swimming, boat trips and fishing trips on the island of Migneaux, near Poissy; likewise those of 1931 in Triel-sur-Seine - where Artigas, the sculptor Pablo Gargallo and, as neighbors, Pierre Bonnard and Paul Fort 88 also come; likewise those of 1935 at Pyla-sur-Mer, on the Arcachon basin. Otherwise, and the rest of the year, the couple chooses some port or seaside resort on the Atlantic or the Mediterranean61.
Painting depicting a grassy terrace in front of trees, overlooking a river and houses or industrial buildings, with smoke
Canteleu, near Rouen. Afternoon of Sunshine (1927, oil on canvas, 50 × 61 cm, coll. private).
Journeys always leave room for the unexpected: “I remember our happy departures,” writes Marcelle: ten, twelve, fifteen suitcases, boxes and packages lined up in the corridor waiting for loading. Equipped with a well-studied Michelin itinerary, requested by any call, a wood, a river […] or a small path leading into the flowering trees, we changed direction and found ourselves in Sète after crossing by surprise Brittany and Vendée, while we had left for Cahors101. » This is precisely what happened in the spring and summer of 1924, sometimes with Henri Manguin, sometimes with Jean Puy88. Likewise in 1926, having barely returned from Tunisia via Baux-de-Provence96, they traveled throughout the Hendaye region between summer and autumn.
Painting representing a garden with flowerbeds and pines opening onto the sea at the bottom through a wooden barrier where a woman is standing
The garden at Pyla (1935, oil on canvas, 65 × 81 cm, coll. private).
Saint-Jean-de-Luz in 1927, Audierne in 1928, Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1930, in 1932 Brittany again and the Spanish Basque Country, in 1933 Les Sables-d'Olonne, in 1935 Le Havre then Nice, near by Matisse, Dieppe in 1937, the Midi several times in 1938 and the Îles d'Hyères the following year: the Marquets' tropism takes them towards the sea several months a year and the painter brings back harvests of canvases102.
Painting showing a river going towards wooded hills in the depth of the painting and bordered on the right by a small road and a few houses
Banks of the Seine at La Frette (date?, oil on hardboard, 33 × 41 cm, coll. private).
The fact remains that he cannot do without the Seine. It “was for him the only French river,” says his wife, “it had boats. I saw him bored on the banks of the Loire, because there was nothing passing on the water, a poor little fisherman's boat from time to time, not enough to liven up an immense and melancholy landscape”103. In May 1927, among other things, after a cruise, the Marquets stayed in Normandy: in Vieux-Port, they took walks in the forest and played chess with Charles Camoin and his wife, before retreating to a hotel in Canteleu d 'where Marquet, despite bad weather, painted the port, the yachts and the spiers of Rouen Cathedral84.
Ten years later, seduced by the meanders of the river in Seine-et-Oise, he rented a small house in the village of Méricourt for two years: he came to rest there and work by the water or at the window. , above the hollyhock flower garden. It was in 1938 that
Coming from a modest background, he was encouraged by his mother to train in Paris, where he became particularly close with Henri Matisse. Solidarity with the Fauve movement, he hardly allowed himself to be influenced by other currents of post-impressionism and, from the 1910s, enjoyed success which allowed him to make a comfortable living from his art. A great traveler, he traveled across France, Europe, the Maghreb and even the Middle East. From 1920, he left Paris every winter for Algiers, where he married Marcelle Martinet (1892-1984) in 1923, and where he spent the Second World War.
Apart from a few portraits and still lifes as well as a certain number of nudes and especially drawings, Marquet devotes himself to painting landscapes, natural or urban, often represented overhanging, with a strong presence of water. He paints on grounds and his repetitive subjects are reminiscent of the Impressionist series. Unlike these, however, he simplifies them, emphasizing the contours with a dark line, and treating them in flat areas of deliberately restrained colors, sometimes bright, sometimes neutral. This does not exclude great control of light. His technique aimed at synthesizing forms already made Léon Werth say that he was seeking to paint not the essence, but the essential.
Extremely abundant but not very evolving, the work evades comments all the more because its author, shy and taciturn, did not speak more about his work than about himself. His independence and his refusal of authority, which may have made him pass for autodidact, prohibit any classification, even if he has long been labeled as a “moderate Fauvist” or “late impressionist”.
Born at a time when the Impressionists were reviving landscape painting, Albert Marquet died at the same time as her. He contributed to transforming it but was eclipsed in this by Pierre Bonnard or Raoul Dufy, hence perhaps the relative oblivion into which the man who declared in 1936 fell: “I do not know how to write or speak but only to paint and draw. Look what I'm doing. Either I managed to express myself or I failed. In this case, whether you understand me or not, through your fault or mine, I cannot do more. »
Biography
Sepia photo showing docks with low buildings, people, carts, barrels and, in the background, tall ships on the water
Albert Marquet was born in Bordeaux near the quays (seen here around 1900).
Marquet wrote nothing apart from often laconic letters, but researchers have the archives of the Wildenstein Institute, which include those of his family and the Druet1 gallery. His youth remains little known until he came to Paris to study painting: information and testimonies then became more numerous, especially as his wife published travel accounts and portraitsa. Matisse defines him as “a fighter, solid on the ground”, despite his physical fragility3, and his friends appreciate his judgmentb. Both inhibited and extremely sociable, he likes distraction and has a caustic sense of humor: Marcel Sembat remembers him on the defensive5 but Jean Cassou notes that he knew how to show his cheerfulness with a wink or a smile6 , and André Rouveyre remembers the barbs he threw against people or institutions “while stamping gently with pleasure”7. “Albert Marquet is like his painting: calm, modest, without emphasis8”, and his life seems as smooth as the character, with no other mystery than his propensity for silence9.
Youth and beginnings (1875-1906)
Pierre-Léopold-Albert Marquet was officially born on Mars 27, 1875c at his parents' home, 114 rue Pelleport in Bordeaux. He is the only son of Joseph Marquet, a railway employee of Lorraine origin, and of a Girondine born Marguerite Deyres11, aged 40 and 26 respectively12. After a difficult childhood13, his studies in different Parisian art schools brought him into contact with the post-impressionist effervescence and those who would remain his dearest friends. Life is not easy for a young artist without resources3 but Marquet will trace his path, on the fringes of Fauvism14.
An early vocation
Portrait in warm tones depicting a middle-aged woman sewing, head down, a cat on her knees
The artist's mother painted by him around 1905-1906 (pastel on paper, 61 × 50 cm, Bordeaux Museum of Fine Arts.
With a temperament that is more secretive than solitary, Marquet as a child seems to have found in drawing an outlet for “his intimate suffering15”.
His childhood was not easy. Lively, with a strong tongue, he is frail16 and above all afflicted with a club foot which hinders his running and makes him mocked in the schoolyard. Moreover, his myopia is not corrected13. He escapes into the lively spectacle of the port of Bordeaux, and the Arcachon basin during family vacations in Teich or Arès (his mother's village, where he tends the cows)10. “He had suffered a lot from not being like the others,” assures his wife, who also emphasizes the material difficulties of the household2: the port was a real refuge for him, slipping between the barrels or bales of goods to see arriving and leaving the ships gave him the impression of living his only full and true moments17. From there undoubtedly, as well as emotional memories linked to his mother18, comes his fascination for water, boats, quays19.
All the less inclined to study as his teachers take him for a fool,10 the boy covers his sketchbooks and isolates himself in peace to draw. Marguerite, judging that he has dispositions, decides to support him in this path20. André Rouveyre would later pay tribute to the devotion of this mother whose kindness and finesse Matisse also appreciated7.
Black and white photo showing a busy street lined with trees and buildings, with people and horse-drawn carriages on the road
Rue Monge, in Paris, early 20th century.
In 1890, against the advice of her husband who could not give up his job and had little faith in her son's talent, she moved to the capital with the teenager, opening a business through the sale of a piece of land. boutique at 38 rue Monge, “Jours et Broderies”; both live on the fifth floor of the same building10. Enrolled at the School of Decorative Arts, Albert met Géo Dupuis, Marcel-Lenoir and above all, in October 189216, Henri Matisse. The latter, five years his senior, takes under his wing the young, self-conscious provincial, mocked for his accent and nicknamed "the Englishman" because of his brand new glasses: it is the beginning of a long artistic and of an unwavering friendship despite periods of estrangement13 — which some 200 letters attest3.
Matisse and Marquet left “the decorative arts” when they joined – one after the other and not without difficulty apparently – the Beaux-Arts of Parisd. From 1895 to his death in 1898, they followed the teaching without constraints of Gustave Moreau16. The old symbolist, revered by his students, defines himself as a "transmitter": he seeks to bring out their personality while encouraging them to work on technique21, and advises them to observe the spectacle of the street - method of sketching on the lively then in vogue22 — like rubbing shoulders with the great masters4. Marquet regularly goes to the Louvre to copy paintings by Titian, Poussin, Véronèse, Lorraine, Chardine.
At Moreau's studio, he and Matisse became friends with Henri Manguin and especially Charles Camoin: they remained united until the end of their lives23. The camaraderie will last less with the others (Jules Flandrin, Louis Valtat, Henri Evenepoel, Simon Bussy or Georges Rouault20), even if they spent evenings rebuilding the world at Café Procope11. After a brief stint at Fernand Cormon's course then at the Académie Julian, Marquet and Matisse attended the private Camillo academy, rue de Rennes11, where they received advice from Eugène Carrière, one of the thinkers of Social Art, who seeks to popularize artistic education by opening it to the street22; There they meet André Derain, Pierre Laprade, Jean Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck.
From this time on, Marquet continued to explore the city, drawing and painting in small format views of the Seine, the quays and the bridges13. He begins to take his revenge on life, analyzes Françoise Garciaf in an article where she links his aesthetic choices to his repressed rage, and which she entitles, borrowing from him this declaration: “At 20 I was ready to blow everything up »24.
Bohemia with Matisse
Black ink drawing of a man in bust and three-quarter face, with top hat and glasses
Matisse in top hat (c. 1900, Indian ink on paper, 36.5 × 27.5 cm, André-Malraux museum).
Marquet shares with Matisse ten years of learning — and poverty.
Both were moved in the evening of their lives by this youth where they supported each other in a destitution that Matisse, already married and father of a family, hid under a respectable facade. “We couldn’t afford a beer,” he said in 1925. Marquet was in such poverty that one day I was forced to claim the twenty francs that an amateur owed him. » Matisse remembers that, among other work, they were hired before the Universal Exhibition of 1900 to “brush garlands on the ceilings of the Grand Palais by the kilometer” — a grueling and underpaid task3. He also seems to be the originator of the rumor according to which Marquet started painting in gray because he did not have the means to buy colors, notably cadmium yellows and reds25,26.
Despite the grumpy character of Joseph Marquet who, once retired, joined his wife and child, Albert followed his parents in their moves to Avenue de Versailles (1903) then Quai des Grands-Augustins (1905). When his father died in 1906, he moved with his mother to Place Dauphineg. Apart from a few portraits of those around him – such as a cousin who stayed with them for a while and helped with the haberdashery28 – he painted what he saw from the windows, away from curious onlookers13. When he could, he rented a maid's room or a hotel room as a workshop: from 25 quai de la Tournelle, in 1902 he undertook the apses of Notre-Dame, as well as bridges and quays; from 1 rue Dauphine he continued his views of the Seine in 190429; a room occupied for a few months on the Quai du Louvre, in 1906, offered him a panorama from the Eiffel Tower to the Île de la Cité27. From his parents' apartment he represents the Quai des Grands-Augustins and sometimes, on the left, the Pont Neuf and the Louvre, sometimes, on the right, the Pont Saint-Michel and the cathedral27: showing them in all weathers and under all the lighting was undoubtedly inspired by the series of Rouen Cathedrals by Monet that Paul Durand-Ruel exhibited in 190430.
Painting showing in a simplified way in the foreground an oblique quay, then water and an island with buildings
The Seine and the apse of Notre-Dame (1902, oil on canvas, 54 × 72.5 cm, Troyes Museum of Modern Art.)
Painting diagonally representing a river bordered by white quays and ocher pavements with small figures; in the background, bridge and tormented sky
Le Quai des Grands Augustins (1905, oil on cardboard, 80 × 65 cm, National Museum of Modern Art).
Painting showing in a simplified way a river with quays, bridge, small figures and large square in front of a cathedral
Notre-Dame under the snow (1905, oil on canvas, 65 × 82 cm, Lausanne Museum of Fine Arts).
Painting in blues representing a slight overhang of a bridge slanting over a river, with black spots representing passers-by and vehicles, buildings blurred in the background and sun circled in red
The Seine at Pont-Neuf, fog effect (c. 1906, oil on canvas, 65 × 81 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy).
Painting showing in a contrast between white and dark colors a cart on a bridge, trees and various buildings in the distance
The Quai du Louvre and the Pont-Neuf in Paris (1906, oil on canvas, 60 × 71 cm, Hermitage Museum)
Information Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it.
During this period Marquet and Matisse always worked side by side, in class, in the Luxembourg Gardens, in Arcueil, in Saint-Cloud. Sometimes done in pastels but in bright colors31, their landscapes at the turn of the century demonstrate their common admiration for Cézanne. Marquet can't stand still and always drags Matisse out4. They try to capture street scenes, characters in full movement as quickly as possible: barges, cabs, cyclists, busy passers-by, laundresses, café-concert singers - so many sketches that Marquet puts in reserve to liven up his paintings32 . He excelled in these black and white exercises where economy of gesture and sureness of line mattered: Matisse later compared him to the Japanese “drawing madmen”, Hokusai in particular25,31. Both finally meet at Henri Manguin, the only one to have a workshop where several people can share the costs of a model: until Manguin leaves for Neuilly, all the notable artists of the early 20th century will have frequented his house at 61 rue Boursault, in the 17th arrondissement. Paintings from 1904-1905 where they paint each other in the act of painting bear witness to the emulation which made this place one of the crucibles of Fauvism33.
Under the wild banner
Rectangular beige cardboard surface oriented in height. Printed on it, characters and drawings, black and red
Cover of the catalog of the Salon d'Automne of 1905.
The preponderant role of Matisse in the movement overshadowed that of Marquet, who invested in it without fully committing to it31.
Among all the currents of post-impressionism, Fauvism emerged at the very beginning of the 20th century and died out in the 1910s, not without having revolutionized the chromatic approach in painting34. Joined by others, several former members of Gustave Moreau's workshop, Matisse and Marquet at the head31, entered into dissidence against academic rules in 189835 by developing the following principles: simplified forms, pure colors partitioned and placed in flat areas, detached from reality, more violent than those of the Nabis of the previous decade36.
Painting presenting in a lively and clear palette a foreground of vegetation, then an expanse of water, and in the background wooded hills
View of Agay presented at the 1905 salon (oil on canvas, 65 × 80 cm, National Museum of Modern Art).
From 1901 Marquet exhibited with the others at the Salon des Indépendants, and Claude Roger-Marx soon praised his “growing authority” among these powerful colorists inspired as much by Cézanne as by the old masters37. In 1902 Berthe Weill opened her gallery on rue Victor-Massé to “students of Gustave Moreau”, starting with Matisse and Marquet38: just like Eugène Druet, she was interested in the wild animals even before they earned their nickname at the Salon autumn of 190533. That year, in Room VII of the show which for two years has been offering young artists their chance, five paintings by Marquet appear among those by Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck, Manguin and Camoini. The shapes and especially the colors cause a scandal: Camille Mauclair has the impression of a “pot of paint thrown in the face of the public” and Marcel Nicolle of “barbaric and naive games” of children39; Louis Vauxcelles, better disposed, still spoke of an “orgy of pure tones” and compared a statue of Albert Marque placed in the middle of the room to a “Donatello among the wild beasts”40.
Aware like his comrades that they needed visibility, Marquet was part of all the exhibitions and all the organizing committees31. However, he did not follow Matisse in his divisionist explorations alongside Paul Signac and André Derain, nor in his conceptualization of color as a vector of expressiveness: Matisse even recounts that one day in 1903, his friend painting with him in Luxembourg told him had ironically asked when seeing the colors of his painting what he would do if he had a parrot to add to it41. Marquet, who maintains a realistic approach, is already more attached to lines and values41; painting in the Fauve style consists for him of using pure tones while opposing, according to Roger-Marx, "a deaf resistance to what is a little forced and systematic in the colorful exaltation that his comrades cultivate ". He is criticized for “a sober Fauvism that appeals to the general public” (Gustave Coquiot), to those who like “wild animals transformed into house cats” (Tériade)42.
According to a perhaps excessive shortcut43 by Vauxcelles, Marquet had entered the “wild beast cage” “so as not to let go of his friends […], his aesthetic [being] the polar opposite of theirs”. He is nonetheless “forever enlisted in the movement40”.
Personal paths
Painting in light and luminous tones with corner of building in the foreground on the right, then quay with small figures, and in the distance bridge, buildings, silhouette of cathedral
Notre-Dame, soleil (1904, oil on canvas, 73 × 60 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau).
Rebellious but discreet, Marquet demonstrates his independence through his very silences, while remaining close to his friends44.
The same goes for his links with Fauvism as for his attraction to Japonism, visible through his formal conciseness or his bird's eye perspectives: he quickly emerges from them by capturing what he was sensitive to45. Likewise, he was subject to the diffuse influence of symbolist circles tinged with anarchism, through his masters Gustave Moreau and Eugène Carrière, his elders Odilon Redon or Félix Vallotton, or even his friends Maximilien Luce, Félix Fénéon, George Besson45: Above all, he draws from it the idea of a spontaneous painting, without filter, which stays away from classical culture and conceptual elaborations in order to remain as close as possible to reality and emotion46.
Painting representing from above and in neutral tones a lively street lined with buildings and strewn with flags where red dominates
July 14 in Le Havre (1906, oil on canvas, 80 × 64 cm, Albert-André museum).
Refractory to all authority without being an activist, Marquet established close links with the libertarian circles of the 1890s-1900s - which did not prevent him from joining a more classic anti-fascist left between the wars47. If he never clearly expressed his opinions44, “he has a side that is neither god nor master, neither jury nor reward”, summarizes Sophie Krebsk,l. The art critic Emil Szittya does not attribute to him the political radicalism of a Besson or a Fénéon, but a look whose benevolence tinged with irony emanates, according to him, from the same humanism46. Apollinaire said of Marquet in 1910: “This painter looks at nature with kindness. There is in him a little of the gentleness of Saint Francis48. »
From the turn of the century Marquet began taking vacations outside Paris, with family or friends, due to lack of money. In 1903 he stayed in Normandy with Henri Manguin and his family, before traveling the region in his company, from Falaise to Flamanville38. The following summer he stayed in Paris to refine a series of drawings intended to illustrate Bubu de Montparnasse, a novel by Charles-Louis Philippe, whom he perhaps met in 1901 at La Revue blanche: these illustrations, born from their strolls on the boulevards, were refused by the publisher to the great disappointment of Marquet and the writer49,50.
It was in 1905 that the painter discovered the Côte d'Azur. Following the habit of certain artists - such as Gauguin and Van Gogh - of going to work in the South in community 51, Henri Manguin rented a villa near Saint-Tropez: Marquet preferred a small hotel on the port where he spent more than time at the café to paint. Charles Camoin accompanies him to Signac as well as to the prostitutes from the Roses bar whom they pose on occasion. Marquet then left for Nice and Menton, then returned to see Cassis, Agay and Marseille52: all his life he felt in his element amidst the bustle of the Phocaean port and its surroundings53.
Always attracted, like the Impressionists, by the waters and lights of Normandy, in July 1906 he joined Raoul Dufy in Le Havre: from the balcony of their hotel they painted the streets and houses adorned with flags for the national holiday and set up their easel on Sainte-Adresse beach; in August they went to Honfleur, Trouville, Fécamp, Dieppe36.
The years 1905-1906 marked a turning point: Albert Marquet began to be known and emerged from his financial difficulties. The State, which bought Les Arbres in Billancourt in 1904, did it again the following year with Notre-Dame, soleil and in 1906 with Le Port de Fécamp52. Invited that year by the art historian Élie Faure to participate in the Belgian Salon de La Libre Esthétique, Marquet recommended his friend Matisse. On the sidelines of the shows, the gallery owners Berthe Weill, Eugène Druet and soon Bernheim-Jeune exhibited it among others19. An exclusive contract signed with Druet in 190552 and renewed in 1906 now protected him from need54.
Recognition (1907-1919)
Clear plaque all the way up with a number of names engraved in red under those, roughly, of Matisse and Marquet.
Marquet painted there for almost twenty-five years.
Marquet can now travel far, often with friends: he visits in a curious crossover the same places as Matisse before or after him56. The rest of the time he paints and his notoriety increases. He participated in exhibitions both in Paris and in other capitals, even during the First World War when he was demobilized: “Continue painting. No one in this area can replace you,” declared deputy collector Marcel Sembat to Matisse and Marquet57. This decade is also that of his bond with Yvonne, his favorite model35.
Friends, loves and pleasures
Albert Marquet does not work tirelessly: he likes to have fun and has a busy social life.
In 1908 he took over the lease of the small accommodation-workshop (a two-room kitchen58) vacated by Matisse opposite his home, on the 5th floor of 19 quai Saint-Michel - his friend moving back to the 4th in 1914. Although he regularly attended sketch classes at the Académie Ranson54 until the First World War, Marquet sometimes became bored when Matisse and, for example, Juan Gris launched into abstract discussions on art. Less serious than his elder - who nevertheless always cares about his judgment -, he allows himself to be distracted more easily and tempted, in his own words, by the pleasures of a "slutty libertine bachelor" that is hard to admit in front of Amélie Matisse56: in Marseille in particular, he frequents brothels with Camoin or George Besson. He was introduced to him in May 1910 by Francis Jourdain and their friendship took a truly intimate turn from 1917, only to cease with Marquet's death59. Both succeeded in taking Matisse on their southern escapades in 1915 and 1917o,60.
Black and white photograph depicting a man with a round head and glasses and a young blonde woman in a long dress seated close together on a sofa.
Albert and Ernestine-Yvonne around 1910, quai Saint-Michel.
During the winter of 1908-1909, Marquet returned to the study of the nude, neglected since his school years, by playing with softer colors and shadows partially masking the forms35. Among her models, Ernestine Bazin, known as Yvonne, is a lively and sassy young woman who knows how to make people laugh. Although he did not seem to feel much love for her and her friends did not hold her in high esteemp, they remained together until 1922q — Marquet also retained his freedom63. She inspired him to create paintings whose frontal eroticism, in which the painter's desire shines through, breaks with the more conventional poses of academic models35.
Drawing where a woman is silhouetted in black on a white background from behind embracing another person
Drawing from L'Académie des Dames.
At the same time, Marquet draws from the antics he witnesses in brothels - men and women or women together - a few paintings (Les Deux Amies) and a series of more or less crude erotic drawings, made in ink35 until the 1920s : they nourish the twenty prints of L'Académie des dames, published in 1930 with a poem by Verlaine, as well as other collections circulating more or less secretly64.
Marquet still painted a few portraits of loved ones around this time64 but much preferred the stimulating and infinite spectacle that his walks or what he saw from his windows gave him. Having fallen in love with Paris, he likes to daydream on the banks of the Seine or on café terraces; Matisse reproaches him for this idleness although he knows the artist is always on the lookout behind the stroller65.
Marquet plays billiards and chess61 — playing endless games with Camoin66 — and he is not the last to party. On Mars 21, 1914, a memorable costume ball took place in Van Dongen's workshop in Montparnasse: “Disguise is obligatory for men. Women are asked to be beautiful and scantily clad,” the invitation card stated. George Besson remembers, among the crowd of artists, writers, comedians, athletes or shady individuals, "Matisse, Marquet and Camoin, dressed as bearded popes, dancing Cossack style, vociferating and taking off their dresses to appear in pink swimsuits with misplaced muscles, arbitrarily distributed tufts of hair, and […] inscriptions designating frightful infirmities”67.
Marquet was thirty-nine years old when war was declared: he was mobilized and then discharged for health reasons. He experienced the anguish of the fall of 1914 in the company of Matisse. Wandering through the Latin Quarter with Van Dongen, they felt useless, worried about the fate of their friends who had gone to the front and organized themselves to send them parcels of food and clothing, in addition to abundant mail68. In 1915 Marquet helped, as far as he could, alumni of the Beaux-Arts on leave69. When they left Paris, he and Matisse took turns returning to watch over their respective workshops70. In November 1918, all the comrades celebrated the end of hostilities together in the capital71.
Travel
Marquet discovers himself an insatiable traveler - even if he works more irregularly.
In May 1907, Marquet, Charles Camoin and Othon Friesz explored London with great excitement. In mid-July, Marquet's second stay - staying in Soho, he got by without speaking English - was interrupted after a few days: the young man had to return to the bedside of his mother, who died in Teich on August 2572. Very affected, he went down to work in Ciboure and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. The following year he visited Italy with Henri Manguin, going as far as Rome then Naples73; he stops among others in Fiesole where there are Paul Signac but also Leo and Gertrude Stein, defenders of modern art and in particular of Fauvism. On his return Marquet goes to see Camoin in Cassis before resting from the heat in a hotel in Poissy54. The old medieval city, industrialized in the 19th century, has retained its charm and its taverns, suggesting several sketches and small-format paintings. In gray weather he fishes with Matisse who comes to join him74. Both decide to spend a week in Dakar before the Salon d'Automne73.
During the first months of 1909, Marquet was in Hamburg where Matisse provided him with contacts: cold, rain and snow did not prevent him from painting or drawing75 but he preferred his Parisian studio for the winters to come63. He subsequently visited the museums of Berlin, Dresden and Munich. Returning very tired, he nevertheless left in June for Naples - where he climbed Vesuvius75 - and Sicily, then in September for Tangier, with the writer Eugène Montfort; on their way back they stopped in Seville76. In 1910, a flu having spoiled another stay in London75, Marquet spent the summer with Manguin then Friesz in a rented villa in Villennes-sur-Seine, near Poissy. He then went with Matisse to Bavaria and Austria63.
Operated on for a hernia in November 1910, Marquet kept his room for a month and resumed nude painting to spare himself, especially since he was, according to his own words, “always between colds and rheumatism”75: he did not risk working outside again until April 1911, first in Paris where he painted the Church of the Trinity, then in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, Le Havre, Honfleur. But from the month of August he traveled across Morocco on horseback with Monfort, between Tetouan, Fez, Rabat and Casablanca. He only brought back a few gouaches, declaring to Matisse: “I will never be an orientalist”76. He nevertheless returned two years later to the south of Morocco, still with Montfort. His escapades in 1912 and 1913 took place otherwise in Normandy (Rouen, which he loved even in gray weather63), the South (Marseille, Toulon68), and Île-de-France (Champigny-sur-Marne, La- Varenne-Saint-Hilaire, Samois, Villennes-sur-Seine)77.
Painting in gray tones representing dark boats moored on a quay and others on the water spewing white smoke; in the background, some buildings
The Port of Hamburg (1909, oil on canvas, 64.5 × 79 cm, coll. private).
Painting in yellows representing some small sailboats and flat boats on the sea with the silhouette of two mountainous hills in the background
Vesuvius (c. 1909, oil on canvas, 61 × 80 cm, Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts).
Painting representing a pointed arch treated in blue opening onto a very sunny sloping lane lined with fairly cubic white houses
The Citadel of Tangier (1913, oil on canvas, 40.5 × 32.5 cm, Grenoble museum).
Painting showing in the foreground a large oblique quay with small people and carts, then ships with masts and buildings in the background closing the harbor
The Port of Marseille (1916, oil on canvas, 50.5 × 61 cm, coll. private).
Painting showing in the foreground a very bright red boat on a large body of stagnant water with vegetation and water lilies, and in the background, trees and a blue sky
Samois, the red boat (1917, oil on canvas, 60 × 73 cm, coll. private).
Painting almost entirely occupied by a bouquet of dark trees reflected in the water, against a slightly foggy background
Swan Island (1919, oil on cardboard, 75 × 81 cm, National Museum of Modern Art).
Information Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it.
In May 1914 Marquet stayed in Rotterdam, from where he went to The Hague to contemplate the works of Rembrandt and Vermeer77. The war will slow down his movements. At the end of August 1914, he and Matisse left for Collioure, then for Céret with Étienne Terrus and Juan Gris, where they met the sculptor Manolo Hugué57; worry brings them back to Paris in November. After that - apart from a trip to Barcelona and the Balearic Islands in April 1917 where he seems to have had fun without working much - Marquet spent the entire war either with Besson or with Matisse, between Paris, which he fled during the bombings71, and various towns from the Paris region, and Marseille where he occupied the apartment in Montfort, when he did not settle in l'Estaque78.
The painter's successes
Black and white photo of a large corner building on the left, on a square with passers-by, and columns on the right
Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, 1910.
The enthusiasm aroused by the works of Albert Marquet is manifested by the growing interest of collectors and exhibitions in France and elsewhere.
Marquet continued to participate throughout the years in the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Indépendants. He is often exhibited with others in the galleries of Berthe Weill, Bernheim-Jeune, Eugène Blot - who associated him with Camille Claudel in November 190754. Eugène Druet places him in the third of the four groups of artists highlighted during his "Annual Exhibition", and includes him among the painters whose drawings and watercolors he shows in January 1912: the critic René-Jean compares the landscapes with the pen of Marquet “with the beautiful sepias of Nicolas Poussin”76.
Painting showing boats and sailboats on the water, with two mountainous hillocks in the background
The Port of Naples (1909, oil on canvas, 63.5 × 76.5 cm, Besançon Museum of Fine Arts).
The Le Havre Modern Art Circle, where his works have been hung regularly since 1906, also became one of Marquet's favorite places, who will also be represented in the artistic section of the Lyon International Exhibition between May and November. 191468.
In 1907 Druet offered him his first monographic exhibition: thirty-nine paintings were visible in February on rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré; fifty-three were in the gallery on rue Royale in May 1910 and forty-seven again in April 1913, earning him praise in Le Figaro, Gil Blas and Comœdia63,77.
Artistic events became rare during the war, but Marquet exhibited in Mars 1916 at the Jeu de Paume, for the Salon de la Triennale, and offered paintings for exhibitions and sales for the benefit of artists or victims of the war. It was there that in 1917 Claude Monet bought The Port of Naples from him, urgently inviting him to visit him in Giverny with Matisse79.
Marquet's works are also popular abroad. After a traveling exhibition from Mars to November 1907 (Vienna, Budapest, Prague), they were shown the following spring during several events in Liège, Moscow (Tretyakov Gallery) and Berlin - within the framework of the Secession54 to which he sent again paintings from 1911 to 1913. From 1909 he appeared in many international collective exhibitions: Saint Petersburg (at the initiative of the magazine Apollon), Kiev, Riga, Odessa, Prague, Cologne, London, Brussels, Winterthur, Ghent (for the Universal Exhibition of 1913), and finally, thanks to Druet, New York, Boston and Chicago (for the “Armory Show” taking place from February to May 1913)77. In the spring of 1916, Walter Halvorsen, a former painter turned art dealer, was guided by Matisse and Marquet, whose studio he visited, to choose works by various artists to bring back to Norway69.
Painting depicting a roadway lined with trees and silhouettes of sunny buildings, with a play of shadows
Quai du Louvre and Pont-Neuf (1906, oil on canvas, 60 × 73 cm, coll. Morozov, Hermitage Museum).
Painting in beige tones showing a quay with barracks and two columns of smoke, one black, one white; in the background, passers-by and vehicles on a bridge
The Pont Saint-Michel in winter (1908-1909, oil on canvas, 61 × 81 cm, coll. Shchukin, Pushkin Museum).
Painting showing in the background buildings and bell towers against a hazy sky, with a large factory chimney on the left, and in front of a red and black tugboat on orange water
The Port of Hamburg (1909, oil on canvas, 66.5 × 80 cm, coll. Shchukin, Hermitage Museum).
Information Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it.
Marquet sold some paintings in 1907 to Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, dealer of the Russian collector Ivan Morozov; he is also advised by Ambroise Vollard, Durand-Ruel and Druet, the latter two also being in contact with Sergei Shchukin: the painter thus sells to each of these great Russian lovers of modern art a good number of works between 1908 and 191378. Saddened by the sudden death of Eugène Druet in January 1916, he saw his contract renewed for three years by his widow and signed another with Bernheim-Jeune69.
At the beginning of 1918 then again in the spring of 1919 when Marquet went down to Nice to treat a bad flu, Matisse accompanied him to Cagnes-sur-Mer to see Renoir and they made excursions into the hinterland71. Marquet completed his recovery by spending the summer painting but also swimming, fishing, canoeing or walking in Herblay-sur-Seine. Suffering from the flu again at the end of 1919, he decided, on the advice of his doctor and friend Élie Faure, to seek the sun in Algeria61.
Between Paris and Algiers (1920-1939)
Colored photo of a quay and harbor with ships, surrounded by white buildings
Algiers around 1900: the port and the Admiralty. Anonymous colorized photograph, preserved at the Library of Congress, Washington.
In Algiers, Albert Marquet met Marcelle Martinet, a pied-noir: married three years later and living in Paris, they returned to Algeria almost every year until the Second World War. They also travel a lot elsewhere abroad, without disdaining the resorts that France offers, notably, at the end, La Frette-sur-Seine which the painter adores. Relieved by his wife of material concerns, he had plenty of time to work78: the 1930s marked his consecration80.
A happy union
“He horrified, as if it were a lie, what took on the appearance of the definitive,” writes Marcelle Marquet81: the artist, however, never left the friend and companion he had found in her at forty-five. years.
In January 1920 Marquet arrived in Algiers with letters of recommendation. His arrival was announced by Druet's wife to Louis Méley, an industrial art collector: if Marquet took up residence in a furnished apartment then at the "Royal Hôtel" from where he overlooks the port and the bay, Méley received him at his table, prepares excursions for him and introduces him to the students of the Villa Abd-el-Tif, a sort of Villa Medici where the painter became friends with the young Jean Launois whose drawings he admired82,83. It was also by mail that he was introduced to Marcelle Martinet, born in Boufarik twenty-eight years earlier.
The artist immediately sympathizes with this fine and cultured young woman who has talents as a storyteller. She serves as his guide in the city and the Casbah of Algiers before he goes on a two-week tour of the Sahara, perhaps to escape the attentions of a certain Adèle66, from which he returns dazzled83. Returning to France at the end of May, during the summer he began a correspondence with Marcelle, from La Rochelle where he had joined Signac: she was able to gain the trust of this shy man who was difficult to open up61.
Marquet returned to Algeria the following winter and continued his discovery of the North-Saharan towns and oases (Laghouat, Ghardaïa and Mzab, Biskra, Touggourt82) with a train or bus tour with Jean Launois and Marcelle, who speaks a little Arabic66 . The young painter having praised Sables-d'Olonne to him, Marquet settled there all summer with Yvonne and worked a lot, among others on views of La Chaume66. He passed his driving test and bought a Ford behind the wheel of which he would now travel the roads84 “with clumsiness and recklessness85”. At the beginning of 1922, in the Sahara, camel treks with Launois and Marcelle took them to Tunisia. Back in Paris, Marquet painted views of Notre-Dame. He decides to break up with Yvonne at the end of the year86.
Painting representing in the foreground on the right a section of a house, overlooking a bay with the sea and a rather blurry town
View of the Casbah (1920, oil on canvas, 33.5 × 40.5 cm, coll. private).
Painting of an arch with figures crouching in the shade and others in full sun in front of white houses
Ghardaïa, the arcades (1921, oil on canvas, 33 × 41 cm, coll. private).
Watercolor depicting white walls with some characters, and behind greenery and palm trees
Laghouat (date?, watercolor, 16.5 × 25 cm, coll. private).
Painting showing white houses with a tower, some dark trees, and in the background a blue expanse in front of hills
Minaret in Sidi Bou Saïd (1923, oil on panel, 22 × 27 cm, coll. private).
Information Click on a thumbnail to enlarge it.
Bust-length portrait of a woman facing the front, calm demeanor, wide mouth, medium-length, slightly braided brown hair
Portrait of Marcelle by Marquet (1931, oil on canvas, 61 × 50 cm, Bordeaux Museum of Fine Arts).
The marriage of Albert Marquet and Marcelle Martinet was celebrated in Algiers on February 10, 1923 and they continued their Tunisian honeymoon in Sidi Bou Saïd. When they arrived in Paris at the end of October after a detour through Grenoble and Burgundy86, they lived in the small, uncomfortable accommodation on the Quai Saint-Michel. They only left it in 1931, for a large apartment overlooking the Pont Neuf at the corner of rue Dauphine and quai des Grands-Augustins - the same place where the young Marquet had rented in a hotel that has since been demolished. To the notary who asked him why such a purchase, when they had no contribution87, Marquet replied: “Because of the windows… without thinking for a second,” adds his wife, “that this reason provided, obvious to him, could seem surprising to someone else”88. He will never stop painting the Pont-Neuf and the quays from the angles offered by the facade windows.
The move-in takes place at the end of August after months of work. The artist insisted on decorating the bathroom himself with maritime landscapes seen during his travels, imitating azulejos. In the workshop of his friend the ceramist Josep Llorens i Artigas in Charenton, he painted the 30 × 30 cm tiles which are grouped in the central panels or surround them like a frieze,89.
Marcelle Marquet soon wisely managed her husband's career (negotiation of contracts, organization of exhibitions, sale of works) as well as the correspondence which had always weighed on him: he reserved the mail for intimates, for Matisse in any case90 . She gets along very well with the wives of her best friends, whom she keeps informed of the couple's movements84. His own literary projects took shape in association with him: in 1925 Georges Crès, under the pseudonym Marcelle Marty, published a story entitled Moussa, le petit noir, embellished with eighteen black drawings and five watercolors signed Albert Marquet91 ,s.
Marcelle has always put up with Albert's withdrawn and even confusing character. “He took his place among the others, happy that he was not singled out, undoubtedly aware that by drawing attention to himself, he would have lost the space and freedom that were necessary for him,” she analyzes -she in 1951 in the preface to her first work on him. Likewise, she had understood him perfectly when he replied to her, one day when she was worried that his constant presence might bother him: “No, with you I can be alone. »93
Paint and see the world
Albert and Marcelle Marquet share the same need to move. A “discreet adventurer85” ready for the greatest discomfort, the painter seeks in travel, according to his wife, to escape unwelcome people94, to live without obligation, and to sharpen his sense of observation95.
Algiers and North Africa
For almost twenty years, except in 1931 and 1938, the Marquets took up their winter quarters in Algeria.
Painting showing a landscape with a foreground of overhanging vegetation, then houses and in the background a rounded bay overlooking the sea
The Bay of Algiers (1932, oil on canvas, 65.5 × 81 cm, coll. private).
“Marquet knew that I was very attached to my country and that he would not lack the motifs to paint,” writes Marcelle, who needs to recharge her batteries periodically in the Mediterranean96. They usually leave between December and January: when they do not embark from Marseille, they cross Spain and Morocco, always by car, a Buick from 1926, then again a Ford the journeys are interspersed with tourist stops of varying length91.
Painting representing in its middle a strip of land with houses in front of hills reflected in the water
The Lake of Tunis (1926, oil on canvas, 60.5 × 81 cm, coll. private).
The couple first stopped for several weeks in Algiers, where Marquet tirelessly painted the monuments, the surrounding landscapes, and especially the port. They stayed in hotels or in rented villas - only buying a house on the hills in the fall of 194097. From there they can choose to go elsewhere in Algeria, or to the protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia.
Thus in 1925, Marquet spent two months in the port of Bougie with Jean Launois and other painters from the Villa Abd-el-Tif (Étienne Bouchaud, Marius de Buzon, Eugène Corneau)84, making excursions with them to Laghouat, Ghardaïa, Bou Saâda86. At the beginning of 1926 he rented a house for several weeks on the port of La Goulette: he liked it there more than in Carthage where there was, he said, "no prominent place, barely enough for three or four tables98”.
The winter of 1929 saw him return to the Algerian Sahara, which inspired his drawings and watercolors99. In 1934 he represented Algiers under the snow but left to indulge in the pleasures of skiing. It was this year and the following that he and Marcelle visited Morocco more thoroughly, staying notably in Marrakech and Rabat92, where a house was made available to them with a terrace opening onto the Kasbah des Oudayas and the mouth of the Bouregreg85. In Mars 1939 they explored the Aurès massif100.
The other years, at least those of major trips elsewhere in the world, they remained in Algiers: Marquet was content, for example, in 1927 to paint the port and the Place du Government from his balcony of the Hôtel de la Régence91.
French shores and loops of the Seine
Painting depicting a large body of water with a few boats and houses behind it
The port of Audierne, 1928, coll. private.
In mainland France, often with friends, the Marquets are constantly out and about, almost always by the water, sea or river.
Some summers, spacious rentals are planned that can accommodate Marcelle's family. The summer holidays of 1929, for example, were spent in games, swimming, boat trips and fishing trips on the island of Migneaux, near Poissy; likewise those of 1931 in Triel-sur-Seine - where Artigas, the sculptor Pablo Gargallo and, as neighbors, Pierre Bonnard and Paul Fort 88 also come; likewise those of 1935 at Pyla-sur-Mer, on the Arcachon basin. Otherwise, and the rest of the year, the couple chooses some port or seaside resort on the Atlantic or the Mediterranean61.
Painting depicting a grassy terrace in front of trees, overlooking a river and houses or industrial buildings, with smoke
Canteleu, near Rouen. Afternoon of Sunshine (1927, oil on canvas, 50 × 61 cm, coll. private).
Journeys always leave room for the unexpected: “I remember our happy departures,” writes Marcelle: ten, twelve, fifteen suitcases, boxes and packages lined up in the corridor waiting for loading. Equipped with a well-studied Michelin itinerary, requested by any call, a wood, a river […] or a small path leading into the flowering trees, we changed direction and found ourselves in Sète after crossing by surprise Brittany and Vendée, while we had left for Cahors101. » This is precisely what happened in the spring and summer of 1924, sometimes with Henri Manguin, sometimes with Jean Puy88. Likewise in 1926, having barely returned from Tunisia via Baux-de-Provence96, they traveled throughout the Hendaye region between summer and autumn.
Painting representing a garden with flowerbeds and pines opening onto the sea at the bottom through a wooden barrier where a woman is standing
The garden at Pyla (1935, oil on canvas, 65 × 81 cm, coll. private).
Saint-Jean-de-Luz in 1927, Audierne in 1928, Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1930, in 1932 Brittany again and the Spanish Basque Country, in 1933 Les Sables-d'Olonne, in 1935 Le Havre then Nice, near by Matisse, Dieppe in 1937, the Midi several times in 1938 and the Îles d'Hyères the following year: the Marquets' tropism takes them towards the sea several months a year and the painter brings back harvests of canvases102.
Painting showing a river going towards wooded hills in the depth of the painting and bordered on the right by a small road and a few houses
Banks of the Seine at La Frette (date?, oil on hardboard, 33 × 41 cm, coll. private).
The fact remains that he cannot do without the Seine. It “was for him the only French river,” says his wife, “it had boats. I saw him bored on the banks of the Loire, because there was nothing passing on the water, a poor little fisherman's boat from time to time, not enough to liven up an immense and melancholy landscape”103. In May 1927, among other things, after a cruise, the Marquets stayed in Normandy: in Vieux-Port, they took walks in the forest and played chess with Charles Camoin and his wife, before retreating to a hotel in Canteleu d 'where Marquet, despite bad weather, painted the port, the yachts and the spiers of Rouen Cathedral84.
Ten years later, seduced by the meanders of the river in Seine-et-Oise, he rented a small house in the village of Méricourt for two years: he came to rest there and work by the water or at the window. , above the hollyhock flower garden. It was in 1938 that