ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES - HENRI MARTIN

Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin was born in Toulouse, France in 1860. He first trained in Toulouse at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Jules Garipuy, where he was also a pupil of Delacroix. In 1879 he moved to Paris and worked in the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens. In 1886 he exhibited for the first time at the Salon. He won a scholarship for a tour in Italy, where he developed his own style with its characteristic short, divisionist brush strokes. He received the gold metal at the Salon in 1889, and became a member of the Legion of Honour. He had painted some unusually large pictures for the Neo-lmpressionists and won great acclaim when he exhibited them at a one-man show at the Mancini Gallery in 1895.

At the World Fair in 1900, he won the Grand Prize. He was commissioned to paint some important murals for the city hall in Paris in 1895 and for the Capitol in Toulouse in 1903-1906. He made friends with Rodin during that period. He lived most of his life in Marquayrol, near Bastide-du-Vert, France, where he died in 1943.