Bernard Charoy FORGOTTEN MEADOW Hand Signed Limited Edition Lithograph

This is a limited edition hand signed lithograph by Bernard Charoy titled “FORGOTTEN MEADOW”.

Medium: Original Lithograph on arches paper [Hand Signed and Numbered by the artist].

Published in 1978. Paper measures 22″ x 30″. Image measures 18″ x 24″.

This piece is numbered from a limited edition of 250.

Comes with a certificate of authenticity. Comes unframed. In mint condition!

THIS IS THE BEST PRICE YOU WILL FIND ANYWHERE FOR THE SAME PIECE!

Bernard Charoy was born in 1931 to a family of artisans, in the Lorraine region on the East of France. His creative lineage and the artistic heritage of his region were to have a profound influence on his career. Before entering boarding school he had already demonstrated his gift as a draftsman. By the age of 11 he was executing drawings and illustrations which showed exceptional talent and – something which is far more rare than technical virtuosity – a keen sense of human sentiment which would continue to mark his later works. His prodigious talent and introspective sensibility are brilliantly illustrated by the self-portrait at the front of the book, which he executed at the age of 17.

Charoy came to Butte Montmartre in 1955 to learn and work with the artists of the Atelier Dejoie. He came with his prodigious talent and a burning desire to learn and work. It was here that he learned the art of lithography and began applying his talents to the more difficult medium oil painting. At the same time he also made the necessary contacts with advertising agencies and newspaper publishers to pursue an artistic career in Paris.

Charoy found the world of advertising too constraining for his artistic talents. As he put it, “I had much more liberty in working with the press than in advertising. ” He is more interested in illustrating persons or scenes evoking real emotions than in selling his talent to the world of commercial illustration. By 1961, Charoy’s career as an illustrator was firmly established with such important publishers as Edi-Monde and Opera Mundi. It is in his native Lorraine that Charoy finds his true creative influences. The region possesses a wealth of artistic treasures that were to have an important impact on the talent and imagination of young Bernard. There is clearly a lineage with the engraver Jacques Callot, who depicted villages and bucolic scenes from the Lorraine countryside. Charoy’s early paysages bear a striking resemblance in both theme and sentiment. With the advent of World War I, the lively optimism and joyful sensuality of the art of illustration all but disappeared. Only with Bernard Charoy and his generation of artists did French illustration renew with its joyous past. Bernard Charoy is a brilliant talented figurative artist, who was continued to follow and develop his creativity instincts for nearly half a century.

Discussions of painting conventionally centre on consideration of line and form, colour and brush stroke. This is true because these are the material elements that make the plastic construction of a painting. The paintings of Bernard Charoy somehow elicit something different from conventional art critical parlance. His works are composed of the some plastic elements, of course, but also of flesh, of health, of perfume and of sentiment. Charoy doesn’t paint only portraits, and did also some very poetic landscapes. He paints the regions, he knew as a boy, the rich, humid and poetic countryside of his native LORRAINE, or the moist and mysterious lands of BURGUNDY. Whether it be the mood and mystery of some secluded landscape, the delight and freshness of an adolescent girl discovering and exhorting in her own femininity, or the cool and tantalising gaze of a beautiful woman in full command of her seductive powers, Charoy’s paintings always communicate a feeling. From the early pen and ink drawings to the ambitious large scale canvases I am unmistakable sensibility in habits all of these works, meaning that they could only be signed “Charoy”.