Marie Détrée

Marie Détrée is a French painter, official Marine Painter since 2010, recognized for her work dedicated to the maritime world, to marine landscapes, ships, polar expeditions, and sea voyages. Born in Saint-Malo in a family of sailors, she developed a deep sensitivity for the maritime universe very early on which nourishes all of her artistic creation today. A graduate of the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris, where she notably studied under Pierre Carron, she received the Alphonse Cellier Prize from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1995, rewarding the quality of her work. In 2010, she was appointed Official Marine Painter (POM), a prestigious distinction awarded by the Ministry of the Armed Forces which allows her to board national Navy vessels and accompany numerous missions on all the seas of the globe.

Her work is based on direct experience in the field: Marie Détrée regularly boards emblematic vessels such as the Charles de Gaulle, the BPC Mistral and Dixmude, the frigates Forbin, Aquitaine, La Fayette, Jean Bart or Vendémiaire, but also aboard nuclear submarines and the polar patrol vessel L'Astrolabe, with which she discovered the Antarctic and the Antarctic in 2022. These expeditions nourish a body of work where marine painting, the travel journal, the maritime landscape, ports, the oceans, marine fauna, and the lights of the sea occupy a central place.

While she also masters oil painting, Marie Détrée favors gouache, whose speed of execution and opacity allow her to work directly on the subject in sometimes extreme conditions. Her approach is in line with the great painters of the Navy such as Marin Marie or Albert Brenet, while developing a personal writing that mixes documentary precision, colored sensitivity, and poetic gaze. Her work also explores themes of animals, maritime heritage, scenes of life at sea, and illustration, making naturalist observation and narration dialogue.

In parallel with her activity as a painter, Marie Détrée is also an illustrator and author. She has published notably La grande ménagerie du bord (Chasse-Marée / Glénat), Bateaux en bouteille (Tutti Frutti), several children's books, as well as illustrations for books dedicated to the maritime universe. She also creates several postage stamps for La Poste, dedicated notably to L'Astrolabe, the Antarctic, the Kerguelen Islands, or different vessels of the national Navy.

Her work has been presented in numerous personal and collective exhibitions, notably at the Musée national de la Marine in Paris, the Musée maritime de Tatihou, the Musée national de la Marine in Brest, the Taylor Foundation, Douarnenez, Rouen, Saint-Malo, the Yacht Club de France, as well as the National Assembly. Knight of the Maritime Merit, decorated with the National Defense Medal and the Atalanta medal for the fight against piracy, Marie Détrée is today established as a major figure in contemporary marine painting, associating contemporary art, travel, illustration, figurative painting, and maritime heritage within a work recognized in France and internationally.