Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin was born in Toulouse, France in 1860. He first trained in Toulouse at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Jules Garipuy, where he was also a pupil of Delacroix. In 1879 he moved to Paris and worked in the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens and in 1886 he exhibited for the first time at the Salon. He won a scholarship for a tour in Italy, where he developed his own style with its characteristic short, divisionist brush strokes.

He painted some unusually large pictures in a neo-impressionistic style for which he won great acclaim when he exhibited them at a one-man show at the Mancini Gallery in 1895. He was commissioned to paint some important murals for the city hall in Paris in 1895 and for the Capitol in Toulouse in 1903-1906. He made friends with Rodin during that period.

Henri Martin lived most of his life in Marquayrol, near Bastide-du-Vert, France, where he died in November of 1943.