Jean Hippolyte Marchand is a famous French painter, printmaker, illustrator and monumental artist who lived and worked in France at the beginning of the 20th century. One of the founders of Fauvism and Cubism - trends in French painting and fine arts of the late 19th - early 20th centuries.
Biography
Jean Marchand was remembered by his contemporaries as a very talented and versatile person. He left behind many landscapes, still lifes and figured compositions, achieved success in the art of engraving, in illustrating magazines and in design.
The artist was born on November 21, 1883 in Paris. In 1902 - 1906 he studied at the Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux-Arts, a national higher school of fine arts, located in the capital of France, directly opposite the Louvre. Leon Bonn, a famous French painter, portraitist and collector, became his teacher.
The Ecole des Beaux-Arts school, along with Julianne's private academy, was considered the center of all art education in France and the graduates of this educational institution were considered the best artists of the Third French Republic.
Marchand came from a poor family, so in order to earn his living and study, Jean had to earn money as a jewelry designer, developer of textile sketches and other work related to arts and crafts.
The researchers note that Marchand's early work is filled with a spirit of experimentation and novelty. Since 1912, he has been painting and exhibiting his works, executed in the manner of Cubism and Futurism. In the future, however, his works will no longer be so divorced from reality and will become more lifelike.
In 1910, his painting Still Life with Bananas was at the Monet and Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1910, organized by Roger Fry, and then re-exhibited at the same exhibition in 1912. In the same 1912, the painting was bought by the famous collector Samuel Courteau from Great Britain.
After buying a few more paintings by Jean Marchand, he joins the Bloomsbury group or Bloomsbury circle - an elite community of English artists, writers and artists, intellectuals and graduates of the University of Cambridge, historians, economists, philosophers and mathematicians.
In 1911 he traveled through the Russian Empire, creating during the trip his famous landscapes "The Source", "Railways in Russia" and "View of Moscow".
Striving to gain popularity, the artist becomes a permanent member of the associations of artists and artists known in Paris, regularly exhibits his work at various exhibitions. One of his works in 1915 was shown at the Carfax Gallery in London and received positive reviews from critics.
After that, several of Marchand's works were bought for a lot of money by British industrialists and magnates.
Since 1919, Marchand began to conduct solo exhibitions in Paris, at the Carfax gallery in London and at other exhibitions outside his native country.
In the second half of the 1920s, Marchand makes a long tour of the Middle East, during which he fulfills many orders from private individuals.
Jean Marchand died in 1940 in France, in Paris.
Wife and child
Jean Marshan's wife is Sofia Filippovna Levitskaya, a native of the western Ukrainian Podillia. Sophia's first marriage ended in failure: her husband, a Ukrainian doctor, suffered from chronic alcoholism, as a result of which their common daughter Olga was born with mental disabilities and mental retardation. In the end, Sophia breaks off relations with her husband and leaves with her daughter to her parents.
In 1905, Sophia left for Paris and got a job at the same school as Marchand. In the process of training, the student achieves impressive success, gets to know Marchand, participates in the same associations and exhibitions as he does.
After graduation, lovers Sophia and Jean live in Paris together. In the second half of the 1920s, Marchand became popular and the couple often travel to Occitania and Provence, the French Alps and the Côte d'Azur. During these travels, the couple create works of art and landscapes together.
In the late 1920s, the situation in Ukraine worsened. Sophia's father, a former large landowner, saving a seriously ill granddaughter Olga, sends her to her mother in Paris. This circumstance quickly destroyed the relationship between the spouses and Jean at one point decides to leave his wife and her daughter.
After breaking up with her husband, Sofya Filippovna, since 1930, began to suffer from nervous exhaustion and mental illness. By 1937, the woman is completely insane and dies.
Creation
Jean Marchand's works are kept in the largest private and public collections and collections:
- at the Vienna Art Museum "Gallery Albertina";
- at the Paris Museum of Modern Art;
- at the Belgian "Royal Museum of Fine Arts" in Brussels;
- at the British Tate Gallery in London;
- at the New York "Brooklyn Museum of Art"
- at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.
One of the most famous works is the painting "Lake", written by the author in 1910. The coastal rocks and trees depicted on it are distinguished by sensual, sculptural forms, geometrically drawn by the coastline of the river and a distant lake. The picture is written in the spirit of Paul Cézanne's creativity and conveys to the viewer one of the views of the Mediterranean coast.
At various times, Marchand prepared illustrations for the following famous books:
- Song of the Sun, biography of Francis of Assisi, published in 1919 and reprinted in 1929;
- The Way of the Cross by Paul Claudel;
- René-Jean's Twenty-Six Reproductions of Paintings and Drawings;
- The Last Judgment by the French journalist and writer Henry Malerba;
- "The Serpent", "A Letter from Madame S." and The Maritime Cemetery by the French writer, poet and philosopher Paul Valery;
- Grasse by the French writer and translator Francis de Miomandre;
- "Inscriptions" by the French journalist, publicist and politician Charles Maras;
- "Skin of the Soul" by the French writer and poet Catherine Pozzi.
In 1920-1922 he illustrated the French magazine Almanac de Coca-nier, which was published by Jean Cocteau and Bertrand Gegan.
