Original vintage French oil on canvas by Henri-André MARTIN (1918-2004), signed lower left. In keeping with MARTIN’s style, this is a post-Impressionist Provencal landscape with olive trees. A clean composition split into three blocks of colour: the blue sky and horizon, the grey olive trees, and the brown reddish soil or grasses in the lower part of the canvas. This interpretation of olive trees makes their crowns appear like soft clouds, but rendered in realistic silvery hues, through expressive brushwork. An elegant take on a landscape typical of Southern France.

MARTIN was born in Lyon in South-East France in 1918, in a family of doctors that actively encouraged his medical career in early adulthood, which he pursued alongside art. He developed his artistic vocation from a young age, under the influence of Joseph Lamberton, a painter and sculptor from Saint-Etienne where he grew up, and of Henry Grosjean, who gave him painting lessons during the summer on the Bresse family estate in Jasseron. Influenced by his mother, who saw Paris as a place of “perdition”, he did not initially enrol in the Beaux-Arts in the capital. However, regretting his decision, he ended up studying there after his first years of medicine in Lyon.

The pivotal period in his life as an artist coincided with the focus on olive trees as a subject, which feature in many of his works. He was passionate about everything related to the olive tree and its depiction in literature, painting, and art more broadly. MARTIN was equally interested in its symbolism and physical characteristics, including oil production and mills. This painting is representative of this period around the 1970s.

MARTIN’s work was recognized through accolades such as the Maurice Utrillo Prize in 1964, and membership in numerous art salons and societies in France, including the Société Lyonnaise des Beaux-Arts, the Salon du Sud-Est, the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts Paris, or the Salon d’Automne Paris. Throughout his long career, he exhibited in France and abroad (New York, Dallas, Geneva). His works were showcased in museums such as the Musée National d’Art Contemporain or the Musée de la Ville de Lyon.

In light wood frame and in excellent vintage condition.

60 x 44.5 cm (image) • 24 x 17.5 in

79 x 63.5 cm (frame) • 31 x 25 in