Paysage du Lauragais 1891 - Henri Martin

"Paysage du Lauragais 1891" is a landscape from the Lauragais, a region of rolling plains between Toulouse and Carcassonne in south-west France known historically as the "pays du pastel" (land of woad) for its medieval woad-dye industry. The 1891 date is significant: it places the work at the very beginning of Martin's mature divisionist period. He had encountered Neo-Impressionist technique around 1888–1889 through contact with Seurat's followers, and the Lauragais landscape — a region he knew intimately from nearby Toulouse, where he had studied — provided familiar terrain for his new formal experiments. Painted on panel, a small-format support, this landscape may represent an outdoor study rather than a finished exhibition work. Held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne, it connects Martin's artistic development to the southern French landscape that defined much of his subsequent career.

Oil on panel with Martin's early divisionist technique — the strokes are likely broader and less systematic than his fully developed mature work, reflecting the experimentation of his transitional period around 1889–1892. The south-western French landscape's flat plains and wide sky would have offered a strong tonal structure for divisionist colour analysis.