{{Short description|American painter (1905–1988)}} {{more citations needed|date=February 2020}} {{Use mdy dates|date=May 2026}} {{Infobox artist | name = Jared French | image = | imagesize = | caption = Jared French by Luigi Lucioni (1930) | birth_name = | birth_date = February 4, 1905 | birth_place = Ossining, New York, U.S. | death_date = January 8, 1988 (aged 82) | death_place = Rome, Italy | field = Painting PaJaMa | training = Art Students League | movement = | works = | spouse = Margaret French | alma_mater = Amherst College | patrons = | influenced by = | influenced = | awards = }} '''Jared French''' (February 4, 1905 – January 8, 1988) was an American painter who specialized in the medium of egg tempera. He was one of the artists attributed to the style of art known as magic realism along with contemporaries George Tooker and Paul Cadmus.<ref name="NYTObit">{{cite news|title=Jared French Is Dead; Figural Artist Was 82|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/20/obituaries/jared-french-is-dead-figural-artist-was-82.html|accessdate=23 August 2016|work=The New York Times|date=20 January 1988|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160427092728/http://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/20/obituaries/jared-french-is-dead-figural-artist-was-82.html|archive-date=27 April 2016|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="ConformConform">{{cite news|last1=Johnson|first1=Ken|title=Conform, Conform, Wherever You Are: Modern Angst in 'George Tooker: A Retrospective' at the National Academy Museum|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/arts/design/10took.html|accessdate=23 August 2016|work=The New York Times|date=9 October 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160605011423/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/arts/design/10took.html|archive-date=5 June 2016|url-status=live}}</ref>
==Early life== Born in Ossining, New York,<ref name="NYTObit"/> French received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College in 1925. Soon after this he met and befriended Paul Cadmus (1904–1999) in New York City, who became his lover.<ref name="PaJaMa"/><ref name="Outlaw"/> French persuaded Cadmus to give up commercial art for what he deemed, "serious painting".<ref name="GrimesMyths1993">{{cite book|last1=Grimes|first1=Nancy|title=Jared French's myths|date=1993|publisher=Pomegranate Artbooks|location=San Francisco, Calif.|isbn=978-1-56640-322-1|edition=1st}}</ref><ref name="IntimateCompanions">{{cite book|last1=Leddick|first1=David|title=Intimate Companions: A Triography of George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, Lincoln Kirstein, and Their Circle|date=2015|publisher=Macmillan|isbn=978-1-250-10478-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8LCpCgAAQBAJ&q=Jared+French&pg=PT305|accessdate=23 August 2016|language=en}}</ref> In 1930, while French and Cadmus were students together at New York's Art Students League, Italian artist Luigi Lucioni painted French in a painting entitled ''Jared French'', that is currently owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1994.<ref>{{cite web|title=Luigi Lucioni {{!}} Jared French {{!}} The Met|url=http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/486522|website=metmuseum.org|publisher=The Metropolitan Museum of Art|accessdate=1 September 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160915090145/http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/486522|archive-date=15 September 2016|url-status=live}}</ref>
==Career==
[[File:Painting "Cavalrymen Crossing a River" at Court House Annex, Richmond, Virginia LCCN2010719844.tif|thumb|upright=1.3|''Cavalrymen Crossing a River'' (1939), French's central mural for the Parcel Post Building in Richmond, Virginia, is now displayed at the Lewis F. Powell Jr. United States Courthouse. ''Life'' magazine reported that French painted himself into the mural as the figure wearing suspenders.<ref>{{cite magazine |date=January 27, 1941 |title=America Sees Itself in New Government Murals |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=80gEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA44 |magazine=Life |page=44 |access-date=September 20, 2022}}</ref>]] During the late 1930s and early 1940s, French painted New Deal murals.<ref name="JFIEnigmas">{{cite web|last1=Edgecombe|first1=Rodney|title=Jared French's Iconic Enigmas|url=http://www.glreview.org/article/article-1348/|website=The Gay & Lesbian Review|date=July 2004|publisher=The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide|accessdate=23 August 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160826052831/http://www.glreview.org/article/article-1348/|archive-date=26 August 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> French's early paintings are eerie, colorful tableauxs of still, silent figures derived from Archaic Greek statues.<ref name="IntimateCompanions"/> His later work shows "a kind of classical biomorphism," strange, colorful, suggestive organic forms.<ref name="ConformConform"/> Jungian psychology is thought to have played an important influence upon the dream-like imagery in the paintings of French's maturity. The highly stylized, archaic-looking figures in his paintings suggest that they are representative of the ancestral memory of all mankind, what Carl Jung called "the collective unconscious". French himself was never explicit about the sources of his imagery, although on a stylistic level, the influence of early Italian Renaissance paintings by such masters as Mantegna and Piero della Francesca is evident, as it is also in the work of both Tooker and Cadmus.<ref name="Rediscovery"/> On the level of content, he made only one, short, public statement regarding his intentions:
<blockquote>My work has long been concerned with the representation of diverse aspects of man and his universe. At first it was mainly concerned with his physical aspect and his physical universe. Gradually I began to represent aspects of his psyche, until in The Sea (1946) and Evasion (1947), I showed quite clearly my interest in man's inner reality.<ref name="Rediscovery">{{cite book|last1=French|first1=Jared|last2=Wechsler|first2=Jeffrey|title=The Rediscovery of Jared French|date=1992|publisher=Midtown Payson Galleries|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E4xQAAAAMAAJ&q=Jared+French|accessdate=23 August 2016|language=en}}</ref></blockquote>
For the Section of Painting and Sculpture, French produced murals for the post office in Plymouth, Pennsylvania (1938), and for the Parcel Post Building in Richmond, Virginia (1939).
==Personal life== In 1937, French married Margaret Hoening (died 1998).<ref name="MHFObitNYT">{{cite news|title=Paid Notice: Deaths FRENCH, MARGARET HOENING|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/21/classified/paid-notice-deaths-french-margaret-hoening.html|accessdate=23 August 2016|work=The New York Times|date=21 November 1998|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160828094305/http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/21/classified/paid-notice-deaths-french-margaret-hoening.html|archive-date=28 August 2016|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="PaJaMa"/> For the next eight years Cadmus and the Frenches summered on Fire Island and formed a photographic collective called PaJaMa ("Paul, Jared, and Margaret").<ref name="PaJaMa">{{cite news|last1=Smith|first1=Roberta|title=PaJaMa, Whose Photographs Breathed Eroticism|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/arts/design/pajama-whose-photographs-breathed-eroticism.html|accessdate=23 August 2016|work=The New York Times|date=5 November 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180329055956/https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/06/arts/design/pajama-whose-photographs-breathed-eroticism.html|archive-date=29 March 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> In between Provincetown, Truro, Fire Island, and New York, they staged various black and white photographs of themselves with their friends, both nude and clothed. Most of these friends featured in the photographs were among New York's young artists, dancers and writers, and most were handsome and gay.<ref name="PaJaMa"/>
In 1938, French and Cadmus posed for a series photographs with the noted photographer George Platt Lynes (1907–1955). These photographs were not published or exhibited while Lynes was living and show the intimacy and relationship of the two.<ref name="Outlaw">{{cite book|last1=Meyer|first1=Richard|title=Outlaw Representation: Censorship & Homosexuality in Twentieth-century American Art|date=2002|publisher=Beacon Press|isbn=978-0-8070-7935-5|pages=89–93|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pGCre5iI1PIC&q=Jared+French&pg=PA89|accessdate=23 August 2016|language=en}}</ref> In the photographs, 14 of which survive today, the subjects, Cadmus and French, vacillate between exposure and concealment, with French generally being the more exhibitionist of the two.<ref name="Outlaw"/> Cadmus stated that French was the model for all four male figures in his 1935 painting, ''Gilding the Acrobats'', as well as his 1931 painting, ''Jerry''.<ref name="Outlaw"/> In addition, French modeled as John Smith for Cadmus' mural in 1938, ''Pocahontas Rescued Captain John Smith'' at the Richmond Parcel Post Building.<ref name="Anreus">{{cite book|author1=Anreus, Alejandro |author2=Linden L., Diana |author3=Weinberg, Jonathan |title=The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere|date=2006|publisher=Penn State Press|isbn=978-0-271-04716-4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Gis351noNcAC&q=Jared+French&pg=PA132|accessdate=23 August 2016|language=en}}</ref>
Later in the 1940s, French and his wife formed a complicated relationship with Cadmus and Cadmus' then-lover, George Tooker (1920–2011).<ref name="ConformConform"/> When French and Margaret bought a home in Hartland, Vermont, they gave Cadmus a house of his own on the property. French later took the house back and gave it to his Italian lover.<ref name="IntimateCompanions"/>
French died in Rome in 1988 and many of his paintings remain with his friend, Roberto Gianatta.<ref name="IntimateCompanions"/>
==Works in collections== {{div col|colwidth=30em}} * ''Seat by the Sea'', 1959, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/seats-sea-41543|title = Seats by the Sea | Smithsonian American Art Museum}}</ref> * ''Nude and Dress Suit'', 1950, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/nude-and-dress-suit-41544|title=Nude and Dress Suit | Smithsonian American Art Museum}}</ref> * ''Evasion'', 1947, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2012.31|title = Evasion|date = 30 October 2018}}</ref> * ''State Park'', 1946, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York * ''Learning'', 1946, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC * ''Music'', 1943, Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, Georgia * ''John Pelham'', 1939, Court House Annex, Richmond, Virginia * ''The Rope'', 1954, Whitney Museum of American Art<ref>{{cite web | url=https://whitney.org/collection/works/577 | title=Jared French | the Rope }}</ref> * ''Cavalrymen Crossing a River'', 1939, Court House Annex, Richmond, Virginia * ''Safe'', 1937, National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, New York * ''Mealtime, The Early Coal Miners'', 1937, Plymouth Post Office, Plymouth, Pennsylvania. * ''Mealtime, The Early Coal Miners (Mural Study)'', 1936, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC<ref name="IntimateCompanions"/> * ''Mealtime, The Early Coal Miners (Mural Study)'', 1935, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC {{div col end}}
==Exhibitions== {{div col|colwidth=30em}} * Banfer Gallery, New York, 1969 * Banfer Gallery, New York, 1967 * Banfer Gallery, New York, 1965 * Robert Isaacson Gallery, New York, 1962 * Edwin Hewitt Gallery, New York, 1955 * Edwin Hewitt Gallery, New York, 1950 * Julien Levy Gallery, New York, 1939 * Morgan Hall, Amherst College, Massachusetts, 1939 * Vassar College Art Gallery, New York, 1939 {{div col end}}
==References== ;Notes {{reflist|2}}
;References * {{cite book|first=Nancy|last=Grimes|title=Jared French's Myths|publisher=Pomegranate Artbooks|location=San Francisco, California|year=1993|isbn=978-1-56640-322-1}} * [http://www.monograffi.com/magicrealism.htm The Essence of Magic Realism - Critical Study of the origins and development of Magic Realism in art.] * Jerry Wechsler (1992) ''The Rediscovery of Jared French''. New York: Midtown Payson Galleries
==External links== * {{cite book|first=Alfonso|last=Panzetta|title=Jared French by Jared French|publisher=Torino: Allemandi|location=Italy|year=2010}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:French, Jared}} Category:1905 births Category:1988 deaths Category:People from Ossining, New York Category:Amherst College alumni Category:People of the New Deal arts projects Category:20th-century American painters Category:American male painters Category:American gay artists Category:American modern painters Category:American muralists Category:20th-century American LGBTQ people Category:20th-century American male artists Category:Section of Painting and Sculpture artists