Henri Barnoin Quimperlé Brittany

Henri Alphonse Maximin Barnouin, born in Paris on July 7, 1882, and died in Clichy on March 17, 1940, was a French painter and lithographer. He was born in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, at 13 rue du Dragon, into an artistic family: his father was the academic painter Adolphe Barnoin (1853-1938), one of his uncles was the portrait painter Camille Barnoin (1841-1881), both natives of Avignon and students of Alexandre Cabanel; another uncle, the painter Édouard Cabane (1857 - after 1942), brother of his mother (born Marie-Andréa Cabane), was a student of William Bouguereau and Tony Robert-Fleury, recipient of the second Grand Prix de Rome in 1884. From 1900 onwards, Henri Alphonse Barnoin... (The family home was then located at 37, rue Madame.) A student of Luc-Olivier Merson and Émile Charles Dameron at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he exhibited his works for the first time at the Paris Salon in 1909 and received an honorable mention. He won a silver medal in 1921, a gold medal in 1935, and was awarded a prize outside the competition in 1939. In 1912, he settled in Concarneau, where he spent part of the year from 1919 onward. With a shop on the Quai Pénéroff, he was a privileged witness to the bustling port, which he never tired of painting, and he became part of the Concarneau group. With its majestic market halls and large square, Le Faouët was one of his favorite places to visit. There, he reunited with his friend Arthur Midy, who had made his home there. In 1933, his painting of the Saint-Fiacre chapel earned him the prize from the Association of French Landscape Painters. He visited other Breton ports on the Atlantic coast and traveled throughout the region; he also painted in Quimperlé, Quimper, Locronan, Penmarc'h, Douarnenez, Auray, and other towns. Also a pastel artist, he enjoyed playing with the effects of light, such as sunrises and sunsets—he is sometimes described as a post-Impressionist painter—but he also frequently depicted groups of Breton women in traditional dress, fishermen and other port scenes, market scenes, processions, and also rocky coastal landscapes. He became an official painter of the French Navy in 1926.