Biographie

1857–1947

Born in Bor­deaux in a fam­i­ly of mod­est means, Albert Mar­quet dis­played his tal­ent for draw­ing at a very young age. Thus, his moth­er decid­ed to take her son to Paris to fur­ther his artis­tic gift. In 1892, aged sev­en­teen, Mar­quet entered the ‘École des Arts Déco­rat­ifs’ where he befriend­ed the five-year old­er Hen­ri Matisse. In 1895, the two friends joined the course of Sym­bol­ist painter Gus­tave More­au at the ‘École Beaux-Arts’, where they met Hen­ri Man­guin and Charles Camoin. Togeth­er they joined in the Parisian bohemi­an lifestyle and explored the lim­its of con­tem­po­rary artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion which led to the birth of Fau­vism, a term coined by the art crit­ic Louis Vaux­celles at the occa­sion of their dis­play in Room VII of the Salon d’Automne of 1905. Along­side Hen­ri Matisse, André Derain, Hen­ri Man­guin, Charles Camoin and Mau­rice de Vlam­inck, Mar­quet showed five paint­ings includ­ing ‘Vue d’Agay’, in which he demon­strat­ed a great under­stand­ing of the fauve style of using sim­pli­fied shapes ren­dered in a flat fash­ion with pure and vibrant colour. How­ev­er, in con­trast to his friend Matisse, leader of the Fau­vism move­ment, Mar­quet gave up the pure Fauve style and moved towards a more real­ist approach, which favoured lin­ear mod­el­ling and oth­er more tra­di­tion­al val­ues. He became known as the fauve who became ‘a domes­ti­cat­ed cat’. Nev­er­the­less, Marquet’s style brought him con­sid­er­able com­mer­cial suc­cess with the sale of some works at his first one-man show at the deal­er Druet in 1907. Mar­quet was a keen trav­eller and spent much time vis­it­ing his friends-painters on the French Riv­iera and in Nor­mandy. Mar­quet also trav­elled exten­sive­ly in Europe whilst keep­ing his Parisian stu­dio locat­ed on the quays of the Seine. After the Great War, Mar­quet vis­it­ed Algiers, where he met Mar­celle Mar­tinet, who would become his wife in 1923.

Until 1939, the cou­ple trav­elled much, spend­ing win­ters in Algiers and explor­ing Europe dur­ing the rest of their time. They acquired a house in the scenic Parisian sub­urb of Frette-sur-Seine, where they often offered refuge to friends. Rep­re­sent­ed by the deal­ers Druet and Bern­heim, Mar­quet enjoyed inter­na­tion­al renown. Mar­quet showed at the Venice Bien­nale of 1926 and rep­re­sent­ed France at the same event in 1936. Mar­quet also exhib­it­ed in the Unit­ed States and in many Euro­pean coun­tries. He spent the Sec­ond World War years in Algiers and returned to Paris in 1945. Mar­quet died in 1947.

Mar­quet left behind an abun­dant body of work includ­ing oil paint­ings, water­colours and draw­ings. His sub­jects of choice were land­scape and water fea­tures such the sea, a riv­er or a canal. His tal­ent for fram­ing his com­po­si­tions is well known and his ele­gant inter­pre­ta­tion of Syn­thetism reveal an orig­i­nal approach to the mod­ern land­scape. Matisse qual­i­fied his good friend as the French Hokusai.