Autoportrait Henri Martin 1938

"Autoportrait Henri Martin 1938" is a self-portrait made when the painter was seventy-eight years old, very late in a long career that had begun in the 1880s and encompassed the major transformations of European art through to the threshold of the Second World War. Late self-portraits by long-lived artists carry a particular gravity — think of Rembrandt's final self-portraits or Titian's aged self-image — as acts of continued self-observation in the face of physical decline. Martin painted himself on panel, an unusual choice compared with his usual canvas, possibly suggesting a smaller, more private work than his public commissions. Held at the Musée de Cahors Henri-Martin — the museum that bears his name, in the town near his Lot property — the self-portrait occupies an appropriately personal place, in the museum devoted to his memory and work in the region where he spent much of his adult life.

Panel support, less common in Martin's mature work than canvas. The divisionist technique that defined his mature style may be moderated for this intimate self-portrait format — the close-up of a face requiring more precise tonal control than atmospheric landscapes. Late self-portraits often show technical assurance gained from decades of practice combined with a new directness born of proximity to death.