Lamotte: Spring In Normandy, Rolling Hills Pissarro Student

Depicting a changeable sky, and the lovely soft shades of spring greenery that require generous rain, you can sense that our painting was painted not far from the sea. It remains me of Britain, although it was painted in Normandy: most likely in the Pays d'Auge, the "Suisse Normande", with its rolling hills.

It is a work by Henri Martin-Lamotte (1899-1967), an artist born and brought up in Montmartre, where, aged only twenty, he adhered to Gen Paul's "Enraged" group of artists. An further significant encounter in Martin-Lamotte's career was Camille Pissarro, who became his master, then friend, and who invited him to join the "Partisan" movement. Martin-Lamotte exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Franais from 1934. Having contracted tuberculosis during the Phoney War, Martin-Lamotte would spend a lot of time near the coast, and come to specialise in sensitive post-impressionist coastal landscapes. The painting presented here dates from the late 1940s or early 1950s. Signed at the lower left, it measures 54 x 65 cm. The overall framed size in a more recent frame is 66 x 77 cm.