Derniers impressionnistes, le temps de l’intimité, Musée de Lodève, Lodève, 26 September 2020 – 28 February 2021; illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, p. 271.

Henri Le Sidaner – Henri Martin, travelling exhibition in Japan: Hiroshima Museum of Art, Hiroshima, 11 September – 24 October 2021; Yamanashi Prefectural Museum of Art, Kōfu, 3 November 2021 – 10 January 2022; Sompo Museum of Art, Tokyo, 26 March – 26 June 2022; Kagoshima City Museum of Art, Kagoshima, 15 July – 31 August 2022; Museum EKI Kyoto, Kyoto, 10 September – 6 November 2022; Okada Cultural Foundation, Paramita Museum, Mie, 3 December 2022 – 29 January 2023.

Inaugural exhibition, Pavillon de la Reine Jeanne, Galerie Alexis Pentcheff, Marseille, 3 October – 15 November 2023; illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, p. 65, cat. no. 10.

Henri Martin has perfectly orchestrated the transition of the scene from interior to exterior. The threshold is materialised by a horizontal line, which we need only step across in order to embrace this new space, this alternate perspective—to breathe in the open air, drawn outward from all directions, not only by the opening within our field of vision but also by the reflections on the French doors, to both left and right.

Assertive horizontal and vertical lines confront one another before resolving into a luminous opening. The horizon line, just above the railing, appears to mark the boundary between sky and water; yet no element within the landscape allows us to situate the scene precisely, leaving each viewer free to pursue their own interpretation and to draw upon personal memory.

Are we facing the Mediterranean from this terrace, where Penelope has momentarily set aside her work? Are we in Marseille, or rather in Collioure?

The only clues granted by the painter are a few architectural elements: the French doors with their paned shutters, and the railing.

A closer examination of the seaside resorts frequented by the artist suggests that Collioure is the more likely source of inspiration for this type of setting, with its simple yet distinctive vertical balustrade, characteristic of the fishermen’s houses of the small port. In 1923, Henri Martin purchased a house in Collioure, which had been introduced to him by his childhood friend Henri Marre.

He returned there every summer until the outbreak of the war, also renting a studio on the harbour. Each July, he would thus leave Labastide to travel further south, joining this small haven once celebrated by the Fauves. As for the other elements of the composition—the table, the chair, and the basket—they appear to belong to the world of Marquayrol. They are notably identical to those found in Henri Martin’s well-known large painting Les Tricoteuses (recently placed on deposit at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes), executed in 1913 and explicitly set beneath the pergola forming a trellis in the large garden of the property.