Jean-rené Truffier (1905-1982) The Tall Trees, Nontron, Dordogne

Jean-René TRUFFIER
(Nontron 1905 – Chancelade 1982)
The Tall Trees, Nontron
Oil on canvas
H. 73 cm; W. 60 cm
Signed lower right - 1962

Provenance: Private collection, Bordeaux

Born in the north of the department at the beginning of the 20th century, Jean-René Truffier went to study in Sainte Foy la Grande in Gironde and in Périgueux. He then moved to Angers where he entered the École des Arts et Métiers (School of Arts and Crafts). A career engineer, he always practiced the arts. A poet until his final days, a talented musician (he was notably first violin at the Algiers Opera in 1928 during the Saint-Saëns Festival), and of course, a painter. A member of the Société des Artistes Français since 1966, he exhibited at the Paris Salon from the 1930s until the month of his death in 1982. In Paris, his work was displayed at the renowned Bernheim and Cambacérès galleries. Numerous solo exhibitions were also held in Marseille, Nice, Lyon, Biarritz, and Périgueux. He spent the last years of his life, beginning in 1965, in Chancelade, creating small, luminous, and colorful landscapes of the surrounding area and publishing several collections of poetry. It was in 1962 that Truffier created this beautiful, much larger-scale work than the majority of his pieces. Visually, the burst of light and the trees leaning over the path create a very interesting triangular composition. This painting was made in Nontron, certainly in the entrance of a property whose red roofs can be glimpsed through the trees on the right.