Jeanne Besnard-fortin Rest By The Lake

Oil on canvas signed lower left J. Besnard-Fortin and countersigned on the back, depicting two women contemplating in front of a lake. Painting under Marie-Louise, in a gilded wooden frame. Dimensions of the canvas 27x22 cm Total dimensions, with frame, 40x35.5 cm Jeanne Besnard-Fortin, born December 3, 1892 in Dolus-le-Sec in Indre-et-Loire, died December 11, 1978 in Amboise, is an artist figurative painter. She studied in Tours then in Paris where she settled around 1917. She began exhibiting in 1927 at the Salon des Indépendants and at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She met Mane Katz (Jewish school in Paris), Clovis Trouille (surrealist, friend of Breton), Julio Gonzales, Gines Parra and Oscar Dominguez (Spanish school in Paris). She participated in the Salon des Surindépendants from 1931. She was part of avant-garde groups, numerous in Montparnasse between the wars. The Cuban writer Ramon Vasconcellos devotes a chapter to him in his book Montparnasse, Impressions d'Art in 1938. His work is essentially composed of watercolors and gouaches including numerous nudes, landscapes of Touraine, Brittany and Provence. She hardly exhibited any more after the war. She retired and died in Touraine in 1978.