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Image Not Available for Avant l'Orage
Avant l'Orage
Image Not Available for Avant l'Orage

Avant l'Orage

Artist (Grenoble, France, 1879 - 1954)
Date1929
Mediumoil on canvas
ClassificationsPaintings And Drawings
DimensionsOverall: Height: 73.7 cm, Width: 101 cm
Frame: Height: 87.5 cm, Width: 115 cm
AcquisitionPresented in 1935 by A E Anderson.
LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub
Object numberABDAG002568
About MeJean Frélaut, was a painter, etcher and illustrator. His family came from Vannes in Brittany. At the age of 18, in 1897, Frélaut moved to Paris where he studied under Fernand Cormon at the École des beaux-arts. He learned etching from Marcel Beltrand and the Canadian/American artist Donald Shaw Maclaughlan.
Frélaut travelled in Europe and to North Africa and from 1923 exhibited with the society of independent paintings and engravers, which had been founded by Jean Émile Laboureur and Raoul Dufy.
In 1919 Frélaut was awarded the Legion of Honour and in 1934 he won the French etching prize at the Venice Biennale. He returned to live in the Breton department of Morbihan and in 1937 was appointed curator of the museum of Vannes. Continuing to work as an artist, along with Jean Émile Laboureur and Pierre Dubreuil he decorated the École Nationale de la Marine Marchande and executed canvases which depict the Breton coastline, as here, often using expressionist colours which show his debt to Gauguin and other Symbolist artists.