Attitudes Of Sailors By Henry Cheffer - Brittany

Ink and watercolor, initials lower left. Dimensions without frame at sight 27 x 20.5 cm, with frame 46 x 39 cm.

Henry Cheffer (1880-1957) is the son of Émile Cheffer, an engraver of Lorraine origin, and first cousin of Auguste Rodin. Henry was born in Paris in 1880. The young boy was immersed in an atmosphere favorable to creation and naturally devoted himself to an artistic career. After the School of Decorative Arts where he was admitted in 1898, he attended the School of Fine Arts in Paris from 1901. There he was a student of Bonnat, took lessons from the portraitist Patricot and became an engraver. In 1906, Cheffer won the first Prix de Rome for engraving, from then on began an official career which would bring him all the honors and distinctions. A brilliant career for a very talented artist who has been very unjustly forgotten. Painter of reality, Cheffer is an esthete sensitive to the beauty of the spectacle that the world offers him. He translates his plastic emotion directly onto the motif in numerous sketches and watercolors or refines his engraved work in the secrecy of his workshop. In 1913 he bought land in Tréboul to build a workshop facing the sea. He came there on pilgrimage 4 months a year, which means that Brittany was at the center of his artistic life.