Marquet alongside his life-long friends Matisse, Manguin and Camoin, was one of the original Fauve artists, exhibiting at the scandalous Salon d’Automne in 1905. However, Marquet soon abandoned Fauvism, pursuing...
Marquet alongside his life-long friends Matisse, Manguin and Camoin, was one of the original Fauve artists, exhibiting at the scandalous Salon d’Automne in 1905. However, Marquet soon abandoned Fauvism, pursuing a gentler palette and a more naturalistic idiom. From an early age, Marquet was captivated by water and he made the ports, bridges, quays and bays of France and abroad the principal subject of his oeuvre. His paintings are acclaimed for their simplicity and serenity, and their remarkable subtlety of tone. Marquet is also recognised as an exceptional draughtsman and his drawings are marked for their extreme concision, conveying what is essential in his subject or motif with the simplest of means.
A frequent traveller, this drawing was created during Marquet’s stay at the villa ‘Pige-Vents’, in Boulogne-sur-Mer during the summer of 1930. The villa owed its name to the spot’s reputation as a wind trap – a quality which Marquet brilliantly captures in this drawing using the simplest of touches to evoke the wind's blow across the beach.