 He was born in the commune of Boulogne sur Seine, once an important industrial town, near Paris, France, to Flemish mother Virginie Mathilde Jeanne van Maële and French father Louis Alfred Martin (himself an engraver and later a teacher at the Beaux-Arts school in Geneva).His pseudonym, Martin van Maële, is a combination of his mother's maiden name and his father's surname.He also sometimes used the pseudonym A.