Painter, etcher and illustrator, Jean Frélaut was born in Grenoble in 1879. His family settles in Brittany, their homeplace, when his father, retires as a general, he comes to live in Vannes in his family property. After his secondary education, Jean Frélaut leaves for Paris and registers at The Fine Arts School with Fernand Cormon ; he is eighteen. The young man is pationated about etching and learns its technique from Marcel Beltrand and Donald Shaw Mac Lauglan.
He travels through...

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  Biography of Jean Frélaut

  Painter, etcher and illustrator, Jean Frélaut was born in Grenoble in 1879. His family settles in Brittany, their homeplace, when his father, retires as a general, he comes to live in Vannes in his family property. After his secondary education, Jean Frélaut leaves for Paris and registers at The Fine Arts School with Fernand Cormon ; he is eighteen. The young man is pationated about etching and learns its technique from Marcel Beltrand and Donald Shaw Mac Lauglan.
  He travels through Europe and North Africa. He is newly wed when he has an exhibition at the Galery Barbazanges just before being recruited for World War I ; he will be made Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1919. From 1923 on, Jean Frélaut joins the Independant groupe des Peintres graveurs (Painters Etchers Group) exhibitions, founded by Jean Emile Laboureur and Raoul Dufy.
  In 1934, he is awarded the French etching prize at the Venice Biennal. Yet, he misses his Brittany and returns to live in Morbihan. In 1937, he is named curator at the Vannes Museum. In collaboration with Jean Emile Laboureur and Pierre Dubreuil, he decorates the National Merchant Navy School.
  In his book « La gravure, les procédés et l'histoire » (La table ronde Ed., 1948), Jean Bersier describes him that way : « As soon as Mac Langhlan taught him how to etch, he tried his hardest with enduring and considered will to etch in the copper plates the intense love he felt for nature and for his ancestral homeplace. Morbihan, rough and intense lands lend perfectly to Frélaut's descriptions. »
  Known as one of the most important French etchers of the first half of the twentieth century, author of more than 1500 prints realized between 1926 and 1954, Jean Frélaut's work can be found in collections at the Vannes Museum and at the Breton Department of Quimper Museum. Also, in the forties and early fifties, the artist will illustrate many authors and poets  (Jean de La Fontaine, Châteaubriant, Alain-Fournier, Georges Duhamel, Paul
  Verlaine, Alexandre Arnoux, Charles d'Orléans, etc).
  As a true lover of Italian primitive and Flemish painters, Jean Frélaut will imagine a plastic vocabulary which he will use to express himself work after work, thousands of drawings and watercolors, around six hundreds paintings closely related to his personal and undying imagery. His works are timeless and leaves us with an eternal Brittany. Jean Frélaut died in Vannes in 1954. He was 75.
  

  

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