Painter, born in Bordeaux, SW France. He studied under Gustave Moreau, and was one of the original Fauves. After initial hardships, he became primarily an Impressionist landscape painter and travelled widely, painting many pictures of Le Havre, Algiers, and the Seine, such as his Pont neuf. A close friend of Matisse, his later work, mainly landscapes and town views, was characterized by a simple technique and delicacy of colour.
Albert Marquet (27 March 1875 – 13 June 1947) was a French painter, associated with the Fauve movement.
Life and work
Marquet was born in Bordeaux. Marquet began studies in 1892 at the École des Beaux-Arts under Gustave Moreau, a symbolist artist who was a follower of the Romantic tradition of Eugène Delacroix.
In these years, Marquet exhibited paintings at the Salon des Indépendants.
In 1905 he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne where his paintings were put together with those of Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, Raoul Dufy, Henri Manguin, Georges Braque, Louis Valtat and Jean Puy.
Dismayed by the intense coloration in these paintings, critics reacted by naming the artists the "Fauves", i.e. Although Marquet painted with the fauves for years, he used less bright and violent colours than the others, and emphasized less intense tones made by mixing complementaries, thus always as colors and never as grays.
At the end of 1907 he stayed in Paris and dedicated himself, together with Henri Matisse, to a series of city views. The fundamental difference between the two is that while Matisse used strong colours, Marquet favored grayed yellows, greyed violets or blues. Black was usually used as a violent contrast to light colors for such forms as bare tree trunks or calligraphically drawn people contrasted with very light, often yellow or orange streets and sidewalks. Another difference is that Marquet used an approximation of traditional perspective, although his colors and compositions constantly referred to the rectangle and cut its plane with their calligraphy.
From 1907 to his death, Marquet alternated between working in his studio in Paris and many parts of the European coast and in North Africa.
Among European cities Marquet remained impressed particularly with Naples and Venice where he painted the sea and boats, accenting the light over water. His contrasts of vivid colors describe the waves of the sea with simple drawing which accompany the exactly observed color tones, giving a scene of placid movement.
During his voyages to Germany and Sweden he painted the subjects he usually preferred: river and sea views, ports and ships, but also cityscapes.
Unlike Matisse, there are no obvious periods of change in his work. Marquet died in Paris, on 13 June 1947.
Legacy
Although he notes that Marquet is conventionally regarded as a minor painter, the English painter John McLean is among those who consider that "his feeling for color, the lightness or darkness and saturation of it, its weight, is nothing less than astounding."
Marquet was particularly revered by the American painters Leland Bell and his wife Louisa Matthiasdottir. Since both Bell and Laderman were major teachers in several American art schools, they have had a great influence on younger American figurative artists and their appreciation of Marquet.
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