page_title: Xavier Martínez
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Xavier Martínez / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Martinez's studio with a caricature of the artist, San Francisco Call, 30 July 1905
context_page_description: Xavier Martínez was a California artist active in the late 19th and early 20th century. He was a well-known bohemian figure in San Francisco, the East Bay, and the Monterey Peninsula and one of the co-founders of two California artists' organizations and an art gallery. He painted in a tonalist style and also produced monotypes, etchings, and silverpoint.
context_section_description: Martinez reflected that at this age he had his first awareness that there was a rhythm in the order of things. At age 13 he began attending the Liceo de Varones (Grammar School for Men), where he studied pre-Columbian archaeology and his TaPurépechaascan heritage. He excelled in Indian designs and arts, and painted an oil copy of Entombment by Titian.
  When his biological mother died at age 17, he was fostered and taken in by an aristocratic woman named Rosalia LaBastida de Coney (1844-1897), she was married to an American, Alexander K. Coney (1847-1930) who worked for Mexico's foreign office. When Alexander Coney was appointed  Consul-General of Mexico and posted to in San Francisco in 1886, Martinez followed them, sailing through the Golden Gate in 1893.
  Upon arrival in San Francisco, in 1893 Martinez enrolled in the California School of Design, also known as the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art or San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). In 1895 he received the school's Avery Golden Medal in painting and an honorable mention in drawing. He graduated in 1897, worked briefly as assistant to the head of the Institute, Arthur Frank Mathews, and became a member of the Bohemian Club.
  Martinez entered the Paris École des Beaux Arts, Atelier Gérome in 1897. In 1898 he sent a number of paintings of Paris scenes back to the Bohemian Club for an exhibition in San Francisco.  He enjoyed the company of Henri Matisse and graduated from the École in 1899.  In 1900 he entered the Academy of Eugène Carrière and his Portrait of Miss Marion Holden - a  Tonalist work similar to Whistler's Mother - won an honorable mention in the Mexican display at the Paris International Exposition.
caption: Photo of Martinez's studio with a caricature of the artist, San Francisco Call, 30 July 1905
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