Albert MARQUET 1875-1947

This great master of landscapes in the pure French spirit, Albert Marquet was initially a timid and shortsighted child who was ridiculed by his comrades.

His painting reflects his calm and fervent sensitivity…

Marquet, great master of landscapes

and excellent painter of water

He met Matisse in 1890 in the Ecole des Arts Décos, then entered the Beaux-Arts in Gustave Moreau’s class. Matisse, Manguin and Camoin became faithful friends.

In 1905 Marquet exhibited at the famous Salon d’Automne with the Fauves.

That same year he began his series of the Quays of Paris, boldly brushed paintings with thick shadows using two or three violently contrasting or blurred colours and which are considered as the Fauve period of this artist.

Marquet life was punctuated by travel with a predilection for Northern Africa and in particular, Algiers, where he met his wife Marcelle Martinet in 1920.

Marquet’s art is all about exactitude and sobriety. His watercolours and canvasses are full of the strength of one who knows how to condense the essential and hide the superfluous. He had a sense of balance and the weight of things. He was an excellent painter of water in all it’s aspects – rivers or ocean – and we are seized by the authenticity of his emotions.

Marquet knew how to find effect in his studies and we can say that all of Marquet’s studies were paintings and all his paintings kept the spontaneity of studies. Whether it was Vesuvius or the Bay of Naples, he had a fresh eye full of a large and natural modernity.

Marquet’s fame has continued to grow with time. He is today an undisputed Master of French painting.

In 2019, the Musée d’art moderne André Malraux (MuMa le Havre) acquired from Galerie de la Presidence a major painting of Albert Marquet’s Fauve period.