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Lot Essay
Guy Wildenstein will include this painting in his forthcoming Marquet catalogue raisonné being prepared under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
At the beginning of the war Marquet found himself dividing his time between winters in Marseilles and summers spent on the banks of the Marne and the Seine, painting river scenes from the villages around Paris. He was particularly attracted by the animation of the water, and life around it, a motif he had also explored to great effect in Rotterdam in 1914. The present work, like many of these river views, is seen from an elevated viewpoint that echoes the view of the Seine from Matisse's old studio on the quai St. Michel, which Marquet had been renting since 1908. Unlike many of his paintings of the Seine with their bustling life, La Marne à Chennevière presents a calm, tranquil view of the river suffused with a beautiful, soft light.
At the beginning of the war Marquet found himself dividing his time between winters in Marseilles and summers spent on the banks of the Marne and the Seine, painting river scenes from the villages around Paris. He was particularly attracted by the animation of the water, and life around it, a motif he had also explored to great effect in Rotterdam in 1914. The present work, like many of these river views, is seen from an elevated viewpoint that echoes the view of the Seine from Matisse's old studio on the quai St. Michel, which Marquet had been renting since 1908. Unlike many of his paintings of the Seine with their bustling life, La Marne à Chennevière presents a calm, tranquil view of the river suffused with a beautiful, soft light.