Martha Leonor

Martha Leonor is a French painter of figures and scenes of the Midi, active from the 1960s, whose signed canvases pass regularly through the auction rooms of Lyon and the south: market women in shawls among their bundles, dancers and couples, still lifes, and the bullring, with titles in Spanish such as ‘El Fiero’ and ‘El toro que canta’ that place her among the painters of the tauromachy of Nîmes and Arles. Dated works are recorded from 1967 (‘Il s’agit sans doute d’Azraël’) and 1973, and she titles her pictures in French on the reverse with a running number, as an artist keeping a record of her own series (‘Désir contenu, 20’).

She paints in loose, dry strokes of oil over broad fields of ochre, rose and blue, almost like pastel, and her figures, in long skirts and headscarves, hover between the Camargue and Latin America.

A painter of that name is recorded at Nîmes; her dates and training have not been published, and we list the artist on the evidence of her signed and titled works. We would welcome any information from collectors or galleries who have handled her paintings.