The Terrace at Marquayrol, Rainy Weather

By 1920 Henri Martin was about as established as a French painter could be. He had been a commander of the Legion of Honour since 1914, sat in the Institut de France from 1918, and was working through a long state commission for the Conseil d'Etat in Paris. Five months of every year, though, he spent at Marquayrol, the property above the village of Labastide-du-Vert that he bought in 1900. The garden there gave him more than 200 canvases: the pond, the cypresses, and above all this terrace under its pergola. Most of them are full of southern light. This is one of the wet days, the valley of the Vert closed off behind grey, and the small divided brushstrokes he used for sunlight on stone doing duty here for rain.