Brief Report

Martin's reproduction of an intimate mood through direct observation and the choice of a close-up beholder standpoint has led to this composition, with a heavily "cropped" depiction of a mother and child, which concentrates on the aspect of warmth and security. The brilliant colours convey the atmosphere of a garden scene. For this painting Martin took a canvas that had already been used once before, in a slightly different size and stretched on a different stretcher. The first compositional lay-in, with strong colours diverging from those we see here, is largely covered over, and can only be seen in the outlines of the child and along the edges of the picture (figs 9, 10). Martin adopted and integrated the chromatic structures of the earlier picture, the underlying colour fields interacting with the visible picture in spite of the concentration of the mother-and-child motif in the latter. X-rays reveal nothing of the underlying motif (fig. 5). The compositional lay-in of the present picture follows a diagonal structure, which is pursued in the colour of the hat-band towards the bottom right, delimiting the figures of the mother and child. The greenish-yellow coloration of the background was fixed at an early stage, as the outline of the hat and the sleeve of the child's dress were painted over it. Martin worked with lively and heavily impasto brush-strokes in every possible direction (fig. 3). The signature, probably done with a pen, was only added after the finished painting had dried (fig. 6, 7). On the canvas verso are a number of brush-strokes in different colours, but they do not constitute any decipherable picture, possibly showing only where the artist wiped his brush (fig. 2).

Henri Martin
Child in the Arms of a Woman, c. 1920, oil on canvas, 45.8 x 38.3 cm, WRM Dep. 849

Henri Martin

born on 5 August 1860 in Toulouse,
died in 1943 in Marquayrol, near Bastide-du-Vert, France

Brief report with complete data as downloadable pdf-file

Further illustrations:

Fig. 02

Verso


Fig. 03

Raking light


Fig. 04

UV fluorescence


Fig. 05

X-ray


Fig. 06

Detail, signature


Fig. 07

Signature, letters &quotMa&quot, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 08

Right-hand edge of picture, unpainted area, view of the pre-treatment of the canvas (sizing or priming), microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)


Fig. 09

Detail top centre, along the edge of the picture and in areas not covered by the paint of the second paintign, the strong colours of the first painting can be seen


Fig. 10

Detail, bottom right corner, as fig. 9


Fig. 11

Abrasion of the paint-layer of the first painting, microscopic photograph (M = 1 mm)