Jean Terles (1909-1976) The Harvesters - Sketch Agen Lot Et Garonne

Jean TERLES (Eugène, known as Jean)
(Agen 1909 – Paris 1976)
The harvesters - Sketch
Oil on canvas
H. 65 cm; L. 81 cm

Related work: The harvesters (final painting), Museum of Fine Arts of Agen

An Agen painter attached to his region, Jean Terles began his training at the Beaux-Arts of Paris in the studio of Lucien Simon. He then entered Casa Velasquez which allowed him to open up to more modernity, with a more liberated outlook than that of the School of Fine Arts. Throughout his career, he illustrated numerous works by his contemporaries, as well as older texts. I cite among others Jean de la Fontaine, Georges Sand, Charles Vildrac, André Maurois, etc.

Terles represented almost every subject he encountered throughout his career. From portraits to still lifes to landscapes of all places. These works, many of them preserved in Lot-et-Garonne, are lively and warm, with a thick touch which gives them great sincerity.

Our large canvas is preparatory to another much larger one kept at the Museum of Fine Arts in Agen. It is a scene of harvesters resting, where a bare-chested man on his knees reveals his exhaustion in the shadow of the forest edge. Framed in an American crate.