Van Gogh • Artist Biographies • Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin
Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin
| Birth Year : | 1860 |
| Death Year : | 1943 |
| Country : | France |
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Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin was a French painter whose subjects tended to be drawn from the idealized historical characters and events dear to the Paris Salon, but treated with a post-Impressionist style that remained yet quite foreign to the salons at the time. Martin was born in Toulouse, France, the son of a carpenter. He studied art formally under Jules Garipuy at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse; while there, he also studied with Delacroix. After moving to Paris in 1879, he worked and studied in the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens. Martin's first exhibition at the Paris Salon came in 1886. He was awarded a scholarship, which took him to Italy, and it was while touring Italy that Martin discovered a style involving a radically short brush technique that divided the picture plane in a multitude of small and highly visible strokes. In many ways the technique was reminiscent of that of Georges Seurat: some critics see Martin as absorbing the radical painting styles of the Impressionists and post-Impressionists yet using those styles to create highly conventional paintings.