Hervé LABRID
THE WORK OF JEAN PUY (1876-1960)

Jean Puy - Plage-Benodet 1904, Oil on canvas (detail) © archives of the expert Hervé Labrid, Paris

The Expert

"Every expert, writes Montaigne, must be believed in his art." Because he has, as the Latin etymology of the term requires, "through experience, acquired a special skill" and has thus "proven himself." Hervé Labrid, a member of the artist's family, trained for nearly 25 years from the mid-1980s under Louis Fressonnet-Puy, his uncle, expert on Jean Puy and co-author of the Catalogue Raisonné. In 2014, Hervé Labrid was chosen by Les Amis de Jean Puy (publisher of the Catalogue Raisonné) and the Fonds Jean et Michel Puy (the rightful claimants) as coordinator of the Comité Jean Puy and sole expert on the artist. He draws upon the expertise assembled within the Comité Jean Puy, composed of descendants of the painter who have worked for several decades to promote knowledge of his work. "A steady stream of forgeries, explains Hervé Labrid, arrives on the market each year. Protecting the quality and integrity of the work as well as the interests of collectors is my priority and that of the Comité Jean Puy. We strive to combine experience, rigor, technical expertise... and humility. Our complete independence is a significant guarantee for those who seek our opinion." Hervé Labrid lived the first twelve years of his life with his great-uncle Jean Puy, surrounded by his works and those of his friends Matisse, Derain, Marquet, Manguin, and Camoin. Initially a teacher in France and abroad, he worked in publishing, the press, and communications before directing several strategic consulting firms. Vice-president of the association Les Amis de Jean Puy, Hervé Labrid is also assistant secretary of the Fonds Jean et Michel Puy. In 2014, he joined the UFE—of which he is now secretary general.

Jean Puy - Key Points

Born in 1876 in Roanne, Jean Puy began at the Beaux-Arts and in Tony Tollet's studio in Lyon. In 1898, settled in Paris, he enrolled at the Académie Jullian in Jean-Paul Laurens's studio, then the following year at the Académie Camillo where Eugène Carrière taught. He then formed friendships with André Derain, Albert Marquet, and Henri Matisse, followed by Henri Manguin and Charles Camoin. Inspired like his friends by the Neo-Impressionist movement—he produced divisionist works around 1900 in particular—and, from 1902, a member of the group assembled around Matisse dubbed "Fauves" by Louis Vauxcelles in 1905. "We exhibited at the Salon d'Automne," Matisse would recount half a century later. "Derain, Manguin, Marquet, Puy, and a few others were hung together in one of the large galleries. A whole group worked in this spirit." After this Salon d'Automne, Jean Puy entered into a "moral contract" with Ambroise Vollard that would lead him for twenty years to cede the majority of his production to the man who revealed Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. At Vollard's urging, he devoted himself between 1907 and 1911 to the art of ceramics with André Metthey. It was also Vollard who asked him to illustrate works for his publishing house such as Ubu à la guerre, Candide, Le Déjeuner de l'Évêque, Le Pot de fleurs de la Mère Ubu... After 1919, Jean Puy pursued a more solitary path until his death in 1960. On the Mediterranean coast, in Brittany (particularly at Belle-Ile), in the Alps and the Forez, he built a body of work around the female nude, the sea, nature, and family. But also erotic fantasy, the theme of the woman painter, the doll, and the "recomposed landscape of the studio," a "unique place of metamorphoses." Celebrated by Apollinaire who wrote: "There is in M. Puy an abandon, a harmonious nonchalance, a lassitude that is not tiresome"—but also by Elie Faure, Louis Vauxcelles, Georges Besson, Gustave Coquiot, Roger Marx, Francis Carco, Tristan Klingsor, René Domergue... Jean Puy was, during his lifetime, exhibited more than 150 times in France and around the world (Vienna, Brussels, Berlin, Rome, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Venice, Ghent, Stockholm, Budapest, Moscow, Prague, London, New York, Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Minneapolis, San Francisco...).

Bibliography

Publications

"Jean Puy, monographie", Les Amis de Jean Puy - Thoba's Éditions, contribution to a collective work (with Suzanne Limouzi and Louis Fressonnet-Puy), 2000.
"Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint de Jean Puy", Les Amis de Jean Puy / Thoba's Éditions, contribution to a collective work (with Suzanne Limouzi and Louis Fressonnet-Puy), 2001.
Jean Puy, l'après-midi d'un Fauve, contribution to the exhibition catalogue of the Musée Marmottan-Monet (with Marianne Delafond, museum curator), 2004.
"Jean Puy était-il Fauve?" in Jean Puy, plénitude d'un Fauve, catalogue of the retrospective at the Musée du Château des Ducs de Wurtemberg (with Aurélie Voltz, director of the museums of Montbéliard), 2016.
Bulletin des Amis de Jean Puy (since 1988), contributions.
www.jean-puy.com, official website of Jean Puy, contributions.