L'arrier, Port de d'Agha; a.k.a. Le Port, temps clair - after Marquet

Albert Marquet

In 1941 Albert Marquet purchased a country house in Djenan Sidi Said, minutes from Algiers where he began a series of images of the main port. Marquet was known for his images of ports and marinas, and his travels took him to seaside towns and cities throughout Europe and the African continent. At each stop he would produce several images of a single view before moving on to the next. In the catalogue raisonne of his North African paintings, Marquet: L'Afrique du Nord, (Martinet and Wildenstein), "Le Port, temps clair", after which this etching was made, was one of over a dozen images painted from the same viewpoint, likely from a hotel window.

Sometime between 1944 and 1962, the fine art print and book publishers L'Edition d'Art Henri Pizazza, with permission of the artist's estate, reproduced a small selection of Marquet's paintings. While these have been variously listed as lithographs, the publishing house has this image listed as an engraving, and it presents as an aquatint. Further still, portions of the work appear to have hand-applied color, while other portions show roulette-like texture.

Despite the ambiguous nature of its creation, this impression is a fine example of an era of fine art reproduction, in which the process of the reproduction was in itself an art form, and featured the stamp of the human hand in its overall presentation. Artist's paintings were hand-drawn on the plate, often by the artist, and hand-printed while overseen by the artist or their estate. This impression's inks are strong and clean and stay true to the original painting.