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Paul
Jacoulet (1896-1960)
Born in Paris,
1896, Paul Jacoulet went to Japan with his parents in 1906. He showed
a precocious artistic talent from an early age, starting to paint at age
eleven and subsequently studying under Seiki Kuroda, Takeji Fujishima and
Terukata
Ikeda. He spoke
fluent Japanese, French and English and mastered the violin and the Japanese
samisen. He was also an avid butterfly collector with a collection which
totaled
300,000 species at the time of his death.
He accepted
a position with the French embassy in Tokyo in 1920, but frail health forced
his resignation. He pursued his art full-time from 1921. In 1929,
Jacoulet made the first of many trips to the South Seas, a region which was
to inspire many of his future works. By 1934,
he arranged for the fine artist and woodblock carver Kazuo Yamagishi to assist
him in producing his first woodblock prints. Jacoulet, working with a succession
of top carvers and printers, continued to act as his own publisher, exercising
a high degree of control over the process and personally supervising the
pulling
of the prints. Only prints for which he had subscription orders were printed,
hence very few designs were printed in their full editions. Special hand-made
and watermarked paper made in Kyoto, lavish use of gold, silver, platinum,
mica, mother of pearl and powdered semi-precious stones, coupled with his
use of as many as 300 different blocks for a single print, make Jacoulet's
body of work unique.
In 1941,
Jacoulet moved from Toykyo to the comparative safety of Kauizawa, where he
continued to live and maintain his studio until his death in 1960.
Often dressed
in a silk kimono, his face lightly coated with oshiroi ("honorable white")
rice-powder made-up and touches of color on his lips, Paul Jacoulet enjoyed greeting
guests in his home and taking them to his studio to view his print production.
Jacoulet became a favorite of post-war westerners, who dubbed him the "Frenchman
of the woodblock print". He took great pride in the fact that his prints hung
in the offices and studies of the rich and famous --including General Douglas
MacArthur, Pope Pius XII, President Truman, Greta Garbo and Queen Elizabeth
II.
This eccentric
and imaginative genius, whose prints ranged in subject from the most aristocratic
exoticism to spare studies of the simplest of people, provided a unique contribution
to twentieth century art.
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