Ink drawing on paper mounted on a panel by Albert Marquet ;. He was a French painter. He initially became one of the Fauve painters and a lifelong friend of Henri Matisse. Marquet subsequently painted in a more naturalistic style, primarily landscapes, but also several portraits and, between 1910 and 1914, several female nude paintings. Marquet, great master of landscapes and excellent painter of water He met Matisse in 1890 in the Ecole des Arts Décos, then entered the Beaux-Arts in Gustave Moreau’s class. Matisse, Manguin and Camoin became faithful friends. In 1905 Marquet exhibited at the famous Salon d’Automne with the Fauves. That same year he began his series of the Quays of Paris, boldly brushed paintings with thick shadows using two or three violently contrasting or blurred colours and which are considered as the Fauve period of this artist. Marquet life was punctuated by travel with a predilection for Northern Africa and in particular, Algiers, where he met his wife Marcelle Martinet in 1920. Marquet’s art is all about exactitude and sobriety. His watercolours and canvasses are full of the strength of one who knows how to condense the essential and hide the superfluous. He had a sense of balance and the weight of things. He was an excellent painter of water in all it’s aspects – rivers or ocean – and we are seized by the authenticity of his emotions. Marquet knew how to find effect in his studies and we can say that all of Marquet’s studies were paintings and all his paintings kept the spontaneity of studies. Whether it was Vesuvius or the Bay of Naples, he had a fresh eye full of a large and natural modernity. Marquet’s fame has continued to grow with time. He is today an undisputed Master of French painting. In 2019, the Musée d’art moderne André Malraux (MuMa le Havre) acquires from our gallery a major painting of Albert Marquet’s Fauve period: “Le Havre, le bassin”.