Marquet was born in 1875 in
Bordeaux. In 1890 he moved to Paris to attend the
École des Arts Décoratifs, where he met
Henri Matisse. They were roommates for a time, and they influenced each other's work. Marquet began studies in 1892 at the
École des Beaux-Arts under
Gustave Moreau, a
symbolist artist who was a follower of the Romantic tradition of
Eugène Delacroix. In these years, Marquet exhibited paintings at the
Salon des Indépendants. Although he did not sell many paintings, the artistic community of Paris became aware of his work. His early compositions were characterised by a
Fauvist approach, in which he had a fine control of the drawing and responded to light, not only by intensifying the strongest tones, but also by seeing the weaker ones in coloristic terms. Marquet and Matisse were already painting together in pure colors as far back as 1898 in the Arcueil and at the Luxembourg Gardens in what was later to be called the Fauve style. In 1905 he exhibited at the
Salon d'Automne where his paintings were put together with those of
Henri Matisse,
Maurice de Vlaminck,
André Derain,
Othon Friesz,
Georges Rouault,
Raoul Dufy,
Henri Manguin,
Georges Braque,
Louis Valtat,
Georges Dufrénoy and
Jean Puy. He became a lifelong friend of Matisse. Dismayed by the intense coloration in these paintings, critics reacted by naming the artists the "Fauves", i.e. the wild beasts. Although Marquet painted with the fauves for years, he used less bright and violent colors than the others, and emphasized less intense tones made by mixing complementaries, thus always as colors and never as grays. Marquet subsequently painted in a more naturalistic style, primarily landscapes. During his voyages to Germany and Sweden, he painted the subjects he usually preferred: river and sea views, ports and ships, but also cityscapes. Over the course of his career he often returned to the same subjects, even years later, recording subtle differences in the light. He painted a few portraits, and between 1910 and 1914 he painted a series of nudes Unlike Matisse, there are no obvious periods of change in his work. As one of Matisse's closest friends, they discussed each other's work. Marquet's death was unexpected and sudden from a
gall bladder attack and subsequently discovered cancer, for which at that time there was no therapy. He died in
La Frette-sur-Seine, on 14 June 1947. ==Legacy==