Saint Yves - Jeanne Lévêque - Artist's Workshop In Rennes - Brittany

Polychrome earthenware, circa 1930.

Jeanne Lévêque (1914-2013):

Jeanne Lévêque was born on July 23, 1914, in La Guerche-de-Bretagne, into a family deeply connected to the art world. Her father, a decorative painter, and her mother, who ran a home decor shop, introduced her at a very young age to a world where art and craftsmanship held a central place. She quickly showed a marked interest in drawing. She enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, where she furthered her studies and refined her artistic sensibility. She set up her first studio in La Guerche-de-Bretagne in 1948. Her specialty: figures, market scenes, Breton saints, the Virgin Mary, nativity scenes... She was known as "the Santon Maker of Brittany."
In 1965, she opened a second studio in Locmariaquer. In the 1950s, encouraged by Mathurin Méheut, whom her father had met during his own studies at the Rennes School of Fine Arts, Jeanne Lévêque found crucial support in her career. Méheut became a mentor and a loyal friend, accompanying and advising her for several years. In 1955, the artist participated in her first international ceramics festival in Cannes. In the 1960s, her encounter with the urban planner Guy Houist led her towards architectural works, glazed stoneware frescoes, still visible in Maurepas and Bourg-l'Évêque, near Rennes. In 1978, Jeanne Lévêque received a gold medal at a crafts exhibition in Munich, Germany.