Robert Fernier

Robert Fernier (July 26th 1895 - May 27th 1977) is a Artist-painter French, founder of the Musée Billhook with Ornans.

The man

Its childhood

Robert Fernier was born in a medium from hotel modest, of country origin. His/her father is of Usiers, his mother of the Sauget Country. His/her grandfather is the cousin resulting from Germain of the famous painter Gustave Courbet. After studies with the College, it decides to become painter and is registered with the École of the Art schools of Paris, in the workshop of Fernand Cormon. At nineteen years, it is mobilized and makes a glorious war in a battalion of hunters to feet.

Paintings and Voyages

Painter of the Franche-Comté, that will be worth to him between the two wars, the qualifier of “Peintre of snow”. He will glanera the rewards and a gold medal with the International exhibition of 1937. After a consecrated life to evoke the landscape and manners of its small Jurassic country, it will undergo starting from 1949 the attraction of the East. After a stay with the Morocco, it will go successively in Algérie, then with Madagascar (where it will remain a long time, of 1952 with 1958), in the archipelago of the Comoros, with the Réunion and finally in Polynésie, where it lived of 1962 with 1965.

Returned in France, after having fixed the landscapes and manners disappearing from the people of Africa and Oceania, it was devoted again to Jurassic nature, dazzled from now on bright colors tropics. It shared its life between Paris, where its second trade of writer of art retained it and its castle of Goux-les-Usiers, where it painted.

Robert Fernier and Courbet

Gustave Courbet museum in Ornans

From 1969, its health deteriorates and its sight decreases so much so that it cannot paint any more. It then devotes the last years of its life to the establishment of the Catalog reasoned of the Work of his cousin Gustave Courbet. It chaired since 1938 the Société of the Friends of Gustave Courbet and it is with its efforts that one owes the creation of the Musée Billhook in his native house of Ornans.

Robert Fernier accepted the rank of Officier of the Légion of honor.

He dies out near his, in his castle of Goux-les-Usiers, on May 27th 1977.

Its works

Untiring organizer, it was his life during an artistic organizer, defending his contemporaries and safeguarding works of last the comtois. It created several Living rooms, whose that of the Annonciades, which since 1924, continues each year with Pontarlier and was a time, the first artistic event in center-is France. It exposed its life during, in province and with Paris, but more often in Franche-Comté and Suisse, as in the countries which it traversed.

It leaves approximately 4.000 painted and drawn works, create during one half-century, preserved in many museums in France, Suisse, Belgium, the United States and in the private collections of the countries which it visited; an important work of writer, devoted to the Art and the painting of manners of its small country; and it remains by its pictorial testimony, one time an attentive observer of which it lived the changes, in France and in the countries of overseas.

Its principal works are:

the Burial of winter in Haut-Doubs (1927), currently with the museum of Philadelphia.
the Nativity , (1927)
Worship of the shepherds , in 1928
the Skiers (1931)
the Fair of Pontarlier (1932)
the Blessing of the plow
the Blessing of the campenes , with the international exhibition of 1937,

Sources

Museum Billhook
Weekend Billhook in Ornans, Le Monde

External bonds

Foundation Robert Fernier
Robert Fernier on art-comtois.com

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