Orphée

In 1878 Henri Martin was about 18 and studying at the fine-arts school in Toulouse, where the set exercises were almost always mythological. Under his teacher Jules Garipuy he had worked his way from copying engravings up to the living model, and this Orpheus was one result. He painted the poet as an old man worn down by grief, long after the loss of Eurydice. The canvas won a prize from the city of Toulouse that year, an early sign of the talent that would soon carry Martin to Paris on a municipal scholarship. Orpheus stayed with him, and the mourning musician kept returning across his long career. The painting is kept in Cahors, the town in southwest France whose museum now bears the painter's name.