by Paul Jouve

Paul Jouve was born on March 16, 1878, in Bourron-Marlotte in Seine et Marne. His father, Auguste Jouve, of Lyon origin, born in Lyon on July 11, 1846, had attended the School of Fine Arts in Lyon, was a painter and friend of Theo and Vincent Van Gogh. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam holds three of his paintings. Auguste Jouve was a portrait painter, landscaper, ceramist, and passionate about photography, he will also communicate this passion to his son, who, when he becomes an adult, after using his father's "Bellini" room, will never separate from his "Leica" during his many trips. Auguste Jouve had obtained a gold medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1899. The animal painter Olivier de Penne who lived in the Orchard in Bourron-Marlotte had witnessed Auguste Jouve's marriage. This proximity will undoubtedly influence the taste of the young Paul Jouve for the representation of animals. Paul Jouve was two years old when his father moved to Boulevard Saint Jacques in Paris. Very early on Auguste Jouve noticed his son's taste for drawing, the child practicing drawing his cat. His father encouraged him on this path, introduced him to museums and the Jardin des Plantes, where he developed a passion for the big cats, which he then practiced drawing. Paul Jouve was two years old when his father moved to Boulevard Saint Jacques in Paris. Very early on Auguste Jouve noticed his son's taste for drawing, the child practicing drawing his cat. His father encouraged him on this path, introduced him to museums and the Jardin des Plantes, where he developed a passion for the big cats, which he then practiced drawing. His father enrolled him in the School of Decorative Arts, he stayed there only a year little motivated by academic exercises. He took lessons at the School of Fine Arts in rue Bonaparte as a "free student", but he still preferred to draw from nature. He then regularly frequented the garden of plants, the horse market and slaughterhouses very close to his father's workshop, inexhaustible sources of models. To perfect his anatomical knowledge, he attended the Natural History Museum and the Maisons Alfort veterinary school. Jouve will be interested very early in the different reproduction techniques, he learns lithography in the studio of a friend of his father, the lithographer Henry Patrice Dillon. He will keep his life during a boundless admiration for Flemish engravers, whose works he will see and re-examine in museums, on each of his trips to Holland and Germany. Paul Jouve was only sixteen years old, when he exhibited for the first time at the Salon de la Société des Artistes français, his sending was noticed. The lions of Ménélik, which he had drawn at the Jardin des Plantes, of academic craftsmanship, were of high quality. That same year he produced and sold his first lithographs. He will then participate each year in this exhibition of Fine Arts. In September 1898 he left to do his military service in Chartres, in the 130th infantry regiment, he met Georges Leroux there, it was the beginning of a very long friendship. For the Universal Exhibition of 1900, the architect Binet, ordered a frieze of wild animals over 100m representing tigers, bears, lions, bulls, and mouflons. This frieze was executed in greenish brown glazed flamed sandstone by Alexandre Bigot. Binet also ordered four lions from him to decorate the main door of the Champs Elysées, between the two palaces, and a monumental statue representing a rooster with outstretched wings which was in front of the arch of the main door of the exhibition. The Universal Exhibition of 1900 marked the beginning of its notoriety. Bigot will publish and market the bas-reliefs constituting this frieze, in real size then in reduction, this until 1914. In 1901, his nascent notoriety allows him to publish drawings in the Butter Plate, using animals in his caricatures . It fully illustrates the November 23 issue titled “Social Vengeances” where it denounces the death penalty, militarism, deportations, torture in Russia, the massacres in China, French justice, and the reactionary bourgeoisie. He is noticed by Samuel Bing, collector and dealer specializing in Oriental Antiquities, who was at the origin of Japonism at the end of the 19th century. From 1902, Samuel Bing and his son Marcel, owner and founder of the "Art Nouveau" gallery located at 22 rue de Provence, supported him and allowed him to exhibit drawings, paintings, prints, decorative porcelain objects from Limoges, work on leather and small bronzes. Jouve's works meet with great success. The financial support of the Bing Gallery will allow him to regularly visit the most beautiful zoos in Europe. In 1904 he stays in Hamburg, whose zoo fascinates him, then it will be the Antwerp zoo, and his meeting with Rembrandt Bugatti, the two artists will read a real friendship, which will last until the tragic end of Bugatti. . The year 1905 marks the beginning of its notoriety and its regular participation in all the major salons of the time. In March 1905, Marcel Bing organized Jouve's first major solo exhibition, in his new Galerie rue Saint-Georges. The exhibition is very successful. In July, The Contemporary Book Society commissioned him to illustrate Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book. He exhibited that same year, at the Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts, in the sculpture section. In 1907, Jouve, winner of the grant from the general government of Algeria, will be, with Léon Cauvy, the first resident of the Villa Abd-el-Tif in Algiers. He meets his wife Annette Noiré, daughter of the orientalist painter Maxime Noiré, who will introduce him to southern Algiers and the region of Bou Saada, where he will meet Etienne Dinet. He will bring back quantities of drawings and paintings from this stay. Back in Paris, the exhibitions followed one another. In 1911 Jouve took over the former studio of the painter Gérome, rue Notre Dame des Champs, he remained there until his death. Until his mobilization in August 1914, personal and collective exhibitions followed one another, with growing success. Mobilized Jouve, left for the front of northern France, he knows the trenches and the mud. Jouve draws as soon as he has a moment of respite. His drawings, located and dated, allow us to follow his journey. The colonel commanding the brigade notices his sketches, and speaks about them to the general of the regiment. General Quinquandon was an art lover, he called Jouve to the staff to carry out the plans for the trenches, appointed him sergeant vaguemestre and took him under his protection. On April 22, 1915 he survived the first battle of asphyxiating gases, it was one of the most traumatic moments of his life that he shared with Gaston Suisse, both will remain deeply marked by this horror. In October 1915 Jouve joined his regiment in Salonika, to leave with the army of the East. Thanks to the support of General Quinquandon, he was directly attached to the headquarters of the armies of the East commanded by General Sarrail, and in charge of the photographic service of the armies. This assignment allowed him to draw and paint without having to fight. At the French staff, he meets Prince Alexander of Serbia, who appreciates his drawings. Prince Alexander, future king of Serbia, will become his protector and friend, and one of his most loyal clients, thus introducing him to the European elite. Captain Abrami, who was Clemenceau's chief of staff, introduced him to "the tiger", who would later become his client as well. He met, among other English lieutenant, Comte de Ramsay, who would become the admiral commanding the landing fleet of June 6, 1944, the principal doctor Rivet who would become deputy, general counsel, professor at the Museum and director of the Museum of man. Paul Jouve will stay for two months in the Athos peninsula, visiting the monasteries one by one, marveling at the Byzantine treasures accumulated by the monks over the centuries. He will bring back from his stay at Mount Athos dozens of paintings and drawings, of striking strength and beauty. Appointed responsible for artists from the East, he organized an exhibition in Athens which had a very strong impact. The great success of the Athens exhibition will mark a turning point in his career: he writes "from now on a clean slate of the past, progress without stopping, produce, no longer be influenced by things seen in museums or elsewhere". Back in France, demobilized, Jouve is now a recognized artist. The Jungle Book, whose publication had been delayed by the war, finally appears and obtains a huge success. Prestigious orders poured in. The Queen of Romania and the European elite became loyal customers. He was named Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1920. His marriage not having resisted the separation due to the war, his wife had returned to live in Algiers with her son Romain, Jouve divorced in 1921, and married Marguerite in the spring. Jeanne Macqueron. At the end of the year, in December, takes place the first exhibition of the group of 4. Winner of the travel grant from the general government of Indochina, he is preparing a great trip to the Far East. In 1922, at the end of the summer, painter on a mission representing France, he embarked in Marseilles, with his new wife, for a long journey of eleven months which would lead him successively to Indochina, China, Ceylon, then to the India. He will stay in Angkor for nearly three months, fascinated by the beauty and grandeur of the site. He will bring back from this trip hundreds of studies which will serve him among other things to illustrate, Le Pellerin d'Angkor by Lotti. The years which followed his return were very marked by this long journey in the Far East. His second son, Hubert, was born on his return from Asia, but he separated from his wife again and divorced the following year. The exhibitions are linked, always hailed by the critics, Jouve presents compositions brought back from Asia, he is then at the peak of his art. He had a modern house built, at great expense, in Le Tholonet, near Aix en Provence, in a typical Art Deco style with a magnificent view of the Sainte Sainte-Victoire mountain. He will create a splendid bas relief representing a seated black panther, to adorn the pediment of the main entrance. He stayed there regularly until the 1950s. In 1925, he obtained the gold medal of the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts where he exhibited in the pavilion of applied arts a decorative panel, moreover it is present in various other pavilions, at Fontaine where he exhibits a door hammer , and in many booths of decorators, who present his prints. In 1926, Jouve was named an officer of the Legion of Honor. In fact of his glory, Jouve illustrates The fables of the fountain, The Hunt of Kaa, The barbarian poems, The pilgrim of Angkor, The terrestrial paradises. At the beginning of 1931, he left for a trip of several months in Africa, to finally get to know the country of the Tuaregs. As Marion Vidal Bué says in her book "South Algeria and its painters": "Paul Jouve fulfilled his dream of knowing the Targui country. The enthusiasm of Gaston Suisse, who himself went as far as Tassili during his stay in Algeria in 1925 and had brought back drawings, souvenirs and objects, had greatly contributed to maintaining this desire that fueled their conversations. However, instead of choosing the classic path through Algeria, Jouve found it more comfortable and just as enriching for his art of getting there through Senegal: he therefore left Dakar and went up to Hoggar through French West Africa. " He will bring back from this trip, superb evocations of Tuareg and He will illustrate The Book of the Bush by René Maran, using the drawings made in the African countries crossed. On his return from Africa, he participated in the International Colonial Exhibition in Paris, with two large paintings representing wild animals, and the composition "The Jungle and the Fauna", featuring the Angkor Palace. On this occasion, he will get a gold medal, and the exhibition's guestbook will reproduce on the cover one of his compositions, an elephant and his mahout. At the beginning of 1934 he was received with all honors in Egypt. Host of Mohamed Helmi Pasha, guided by Charles Terrasse, who will devote a biographical book to him in 1948, he works at the Cairo zoo, which has an impressive collection of animals with a unique collection of gazelles and antelopes, coming from Sudan, and also wildlife from other countries than Africa, java-maned tiger, black panthers and polar bears. He is authorized by the Minister to work at the zoo, with all possible facilities. He visits Luxor, Aswan, Karnak, the Valley of the Kings. He prepared this trip which interests him by documenting himself beforehand on the subject. Jouve ended his stay with a major solo exhibition in Cairo, which was as successful as usual. The year 1935 saw the launch of Normandie, Jouve produced two large canvases for the first class correspondence room: "Royal Tigers and Sacred Elephants of Hue". In 1936 he received the order for large decorative panels, 7 meters wide, for the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies, which were first exhibited in the Luxembourg pavilion, during the Arts and Techniques exhibition of 1937 in Paris. , as well as the order by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, for this same exhibition, of the monumental bull's head which is still in front of the Trocadéro basins. Given the dimensions of this order, Jouve will rent with his friend Gaston Suisse, who also had on order for this same exhibition, lacquer panels representing the Arts and Technical achievements of the time, the whole represented 225m of lacquer intended at the reception hall of the Palais de Tokyo. The size of these pieces was so imposing, and their respective workshops being too small, they decided to rent a large workshop on rue Lebouis, to work on these orders. They will stay there for 3 years. This monumental bull's head in gilded bronze, and the leaping deer attached to it, will earn him a new gold medal. During the war of 39-45, he lived between his property in Tholonet, in Provence, and his workshop in rue Notre Dame des Champs, in Paris. He worked and exhibited in Paris and Marseille. On February 7, 1945, he was appointed member of the Academy of Fine Arts. Covered with honors, he will continue to exhibit regularly in all the major exhibitions. He always attends the fauverie of the Jardin des Plantes, and the enclosures of the Vincennes Zoo which are for him an inexhaustible source of inspiration. It brilliantly illustrates the work of Balzac, "a passion in the desert" which will be released in 1948, then Le Roman de Renard, after the adaptation by Maurice Genevoix, and the book "Chasse" by the Duke of Brissac. Despite his age, he still travels a lot, exhibits in Morocco, goes to the United States, then to Bermuda where he spends the summer of 1956, fascinated by the fish of the coral reefs of the large aquarium. He will bring back from this last trip, a quantity of drawings and studies, which on return, in his Parisian studio, will allow him to compose the very beautiful screen "Fish", today in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts of Reims. Paul Jouve, despite some health problems, continued to paint and exhibit his works until his death. He died in his studio on May 13, 1973, at the age of 95. © Dominique Suisse 2008. Reproduction prohibited © ADAGP