Attitudes Of Sailors By Henry Cheffer - Brittany

Ink and watercolor, initials lower left.
Dimensions without frame on view 27 x 20.5 cm, with frame 46 x 39 cm.
Henry Cheffer (1880-1957):
Henry Cheffer 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 École des Arts Décoratifs where he was admitted in 1898, he attended the École de Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1901. There he was a student of Bonnat, followed the classes of 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 that would bring him all the honors and distinctions. A brilliant career for a highly talented artist who has been very unjustly forgotten. A painter of reality, Cheffer is an aesthete sensitive to the beauty of the spectacle the world offers him. He translates his visual emotion directly onto the motif in numerous sketches and watercolors or refines his engraved work in the secrecy of his studio. In 1913, he purchased land in Tréboul to build a studio facing the sea. He came there on pilgrimage for 4 months a year, which shows that Brittany was at the center of his artistic life.