Le Port de Boulogne by Albert Marquet, 1875-1947

Albert Marquet, 1875-1947
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Le Port de Boulogne

Original lithograph in black ink. 1925. Signed in black chalk. Numbered in black chalk from the edition of 75 impressions. Probably drawn and printed at the studio of Duchatel, Paris, 1925.
The most important lithograph in Marquet's graphic work.

Superb rich impression. On double off-white chine appliqué on a cream heavy wove backing sheet, as issued. Excellent condition; some slight traces of old edge mounting and soiling on the reverse of the sheet only. Full margins. Sheet: 15 x 20 7/8ins. Image: 10 7/8 x 14 7/8ins
(276x378mm).

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Le Port de Boulogne is the single most important print in Marquet?s graphic work of the post First War period. It is a superb piece of lithographic drawing, and one which demonstrates to the fullest effect his ability to use monochrome black ink to produce a special, and visually highly emotional, quality of light. It is one of the masterworks of ?School of Paris? printmaking in the 1920?s, and it only rarely appears on the market.

Marquet was on of the most important and creative members of the Fauve group of painters in the last years of the 1910?s. Like his friends Matisse and Vlaminck, Marquet was then seeking a raw visual emotional quality which would reawaken the visual senses of his viewers after what he felt was the bland over intellectual idea of visual sensation promoted by Impressionism. Using primitive and often almost violent emotional colours in his paintings, and a quality of flattened and deliberately exaggerated or distorted perspective, which is also seen in his drawings, he and the other Fauve painters marked one of the most important early radical changes in 20th century art.

In the years immediately after the First War the violence of his colourism was reduced but the adventurous qualities of perspective and pictorial construction were further developed. It is these qualities which are so marked in this outstanding lithograph.