Jean Lachaud, “il Sera Cocotte – Kitchen Still Life

Jean Lachaud, “Il sera cocotte – Kitchen Still Life”

Oil on canvas, 41 x 33 cm

Signed lower right: Jean Lachaud

Inscription on the stretcher: “Il sera cocotte”

Very good condition

A close friend of Max Jacob and Marguerite Sérusier, wife of the renowned Nabi painter Paul Sérusier, Jean Lachaud never achieved the same level of fame as some of his contemporaries. He served as curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Brest and later as director of the local School of Fine Arts. Active between the two world wars, he worked primarily in Quimper as a painter, engraver, and accomplished ceramicist.

Connected to the Pont-Aven circle, Lachaud was in contact with artists such as Henri Delavallée and Émile Jourdan, sharing their interest in intimate scenes, simplified forms, and silent, contemplative atmospheres. These affinities are clearly reflected in this unusual canvas, where a plucked bird lies upside down on a white cloth. The treatment of form is dense and clay-like — a pictorial approach that directly echoes his work as a ceramicist in Quimper. The earthy, subdued palette focuses more on mass and materiality than on decorative effect.

The handwritten inscription on the reverse, “Il sera cocotte” (“It will become a little hen in a pot”), adds a touch of dark, almost absurd humor, giving the scene a deliberately trivial and detached tone.

Given the culinary subject and likely provenance, it is tempting to believe that this painting was originally created for the Relais Saint-Corentin, the family-run hotel and restaurant facing the cathedral in Quimper, where Jean Lachaud also contributed ceramics, posters, and interior decorations.