Monday, March 09, 2009

Jean Despujols and paintings of Indochina, as seen in Meadows Museum of Art, Shreveport

Jean Despujols gained renown early in his career as an artist when he won the Prix de Rome scholarship in 1914, says Wikipedia. In 1936, the Société des Artistes Coloniaux in Paris selected Despujols to travel throughout French Indochina to record his impressions on canvas and paper.

He traveled in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos and painted and sketched some 360 works from '36 to '38. He captured the people, landscapes and still lifes.

He moved to Shreveport in 1941, the year the Germans took over Paris.

His evocative works were featured at the Smithsonian in 1950 and in National geographic magazine in 1951. Despujols worked as a portrait painter as well as fine arts painter in Shreveport. He died in 1965.

In 1969 his Indochina works became part of the permanent collection of the Meadows Museum of Art at Centenary College in Shreveport, Louisiana.

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