It was at Marquayrol, Henri Martin’s retreat in southwestern France, that the artist’s unique style reached maturity. Seeking to capture the depth and movement of color and light, he developed a distinct pointillist technique. Marquayrol was for Martin what Giverny was to Claude Monet – a retreat, a return to nature, and a continuous source of inspiration. He purchased the seventeenth-century villa in 1900, cultivating a lush Italianate garden and vine-draped pergola overlooking the picturesque village of Labastide-du-Vert. Here, in his own version of paradise, Martin embarked on a series of naturalistic landscapes and coastal subjects that occupied him until the end of his life.

The ever-shifting colors and the south-western sun animated his painting and inspired sumptuous and contemplative canvases, such as the present work. The painting’s delicately layered colors and sensitive rendition of light and space conjure a quiet stillness transcends the setting and evokes a state of mind. Martin adopted the pointillist manner from Ernest Laurent and the Italian master, Segantini. But instead of using it to capture fleeting light effects, it imparted a shimmering, ethereal light to his lyrical subjects.

During the first decade of the twentieth century, Martin painted a series of monumental panels for the Salle Martin in the Capitole de Toulouse. These paintings illustrate the cycle of the seasons in Labastide-du-Vert, a grand public commission that echoes intimate studies of his own Marquayrol, of which the present work is an excellent example.

Martin found success early in his career – he won the Grand Prix at age 19 and left Toulouse for Paris shortly after, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean-Paul Laurens. He exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français from 1880, winning a medal in 1883, and the grand prize at the 1900 Exposition Universelle.

The later rural seclusion into which Martin threw himself to concentrate on his conversion to naturalistic landscapes did not affect his standing in the art world. No doubt his earlier body of work had established his reputation so firmly. In 1905, the year he painted the present work, he received the Cross of the Legion of Honor and five year later he held his first retrospective exhibition at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris. In 1914 he became a Commander of the Legion of Honour and four years later was elected a Member of the Institut Français.

His museum collections include the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, the Philadelphia Art Museum, PA, and the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris among many others.