Thursday, March 21, 2013

Albert Brenet



My rediscovery of this extraordinary French artist frustrates me for a couple of reasons:
First of all, since he passed away as recently as 2005 in Paris, I could have made the effort to meet him, when I was living there. 
Secondly, I love his animal studies, but very little of this work is published or available elsewhere.

Brenet was born in 1903, he showed artistic talent at a very early age, and in 1920 he enrolled in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His main focus became animal painting. 
In 1929 his artistic interests changed when he boarded a trade sailing vessel which took him to the West Indies on a seven month journey. He became fascinated with daily life onboard, and started to paint the ship's crew, see ports and people from foreign cultures.
Later his objects were also airplanes, trains and scenes from manufacturing factories.

This is some of his early spectacular animal work.





Bad photocopies, but unbelievable drawings. What power!



This one is a killer - no pun intended. Great inspiration for my film!





These paintings represent a small cross section of his life's work.
The style reminds me of some American Illustrators from Brenet's generation. Confident brush strokes loosely applied give you accurately observed environments and situations.




His paintings often seem to approach photographic realism. 
But just like a John Singer Sargent painting, the result is actually impressionistic.








I still haven't given up on sometime finding more of his great animal studies.

12 comments:

  1. Those lights and shadows are amazing, example on ship and tank painting. And animals so simple and clarly picture. Thanks again for great inspiration images.

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  2. Wow those are beautiful! The tones and colour used on the horned cows really brings them off the page, particularly the cow on the left of the page. Good lighting in a drawing or painting always staggers me.

    Thanks for sharing these Andreas :)

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  3. Beautiful stuff!! I can akmost feel the strength of his animals! Very inspiring! Thanks Andreas :)

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  5. Incredible realism! Especially the ship-captain picture on the bridge. Realist and impressionist at the same time! Mr. Deja, thank you for introducing Albert Brenet to us, I personally didn't know him, thanks!

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  6. Those big cat drawings and ship painting really stand out. How does he achieve such an incredible look! :D

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  7. I, too, didn't know of this artist, so thank you for introducing him to us! Yeah, the captain on the ship, the train, and street scene really stood out for me!

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  8. These are some great paintings and drawings! So speaking of your film, how's that coming along?

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  9. Love it all! Incredible understanding of animal form and build. Gotta say I love the man at the wheel of the ship too.

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  10. I think I have a ships crew on wild sea by Bremer. Watercolor. About two by three ft image.

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