Portrait Of A Young Girl By Meautry

Beautiful portrait of a child, oil on panel signed lower right Meautry (1921-2000), in a Montparnasse frame. Dimensions of the painting 45x37 cm; Total dimensions, with frame, 54x46 cm Born in 1921 in Perreux-sur-Marne, Meautry first learned about printmaking and then entered the National School of Fine Arts in Paris. During the World War, he worked as a theater designer in Cannes in a troupe led by Claude Dauphin and in which he worked alongside Danièle Delorme, Gérard Philipe and Madeleine Robinson. Resisting the Compulsory Labor Service (STO), he became a farmhand for the Limousin fund. His real name Jean-Jacques Grandgérard, he moved to the manor of Meautry in Montpinçon in 1947. He adopted the name. He then saw orders for designs for printed fabrics for the American textile industry and jewelry designs for major Parisian houses while exhibiting in Paris, Caen. The jurors of the Salon de la peinture in Deauville awarded him the first prize in 1958. At the end of the fifties, Meautry became a master glassmaker and devoted an entire year to making the stained-glass windows in the little church in Heurtevent. It was at the same time that he met Camille Renault. Owner of a restaurant in Puteaux, “Big Boy” is a friend of Villon, Kupka, Picabia and all the painters of the School of Paris. And his restaurant is one of the most sought after places. Meautry joined this magnificent stable and did not leave it, especially since in the sixties Camille Renault abandoned the restaurant to open, on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, a real and beautiful gallery. It is probably thanks to this notoriety, but also because he has a look like no other that the young Jacques PASQUIER invites Meautry to join him in his young Cadomus Gallery in Caen. Meautry binds itself there with all the beautiful plastic artists of this beautiful time. They are called Guégan, Brouet, Chesnel or Grand. In 1966, Meautry was the winner of the competition launched by the rector of the University of Caen, Michel de Bouärd, with a view to delivering the most convincing portrait of William the Conqueror. Having risked a close-up, Meautry is ahead of Yvonne Guégan or André Lemaître. After having painted a lot, Meautry died in 2000 in Coutances (Manche).