Jean-Dominique VAN CAULAERT (1897-1979) ◊ Woman with her cocker spaniel

Description

Did Marlene Dietrich, Mistinguett, Sarah Berhnard, Joséphine Baker, Cécile Sorel, Tino Rossi and a few billionaires of the American jet set, like Ms Picha-Eisenstein, have one thing in common? Jean-Dominique Van Caulaert… From the post-war period to the end of the 1950s, this painter signed the portraits of Tout-Paris, then celebrities from New York, where he stayed half the year. Born of Belgian parents in Saint Saulve in the north of France, he enrolled at the Brussels Academy of Arts, before starting his career in 1923, illustrator of musical sheet covers for a Belgian publisher, in the company of another young beginner, a certain Magritte. Then he worked as a poster artist for the theater and the cinema, notably with Marcel Pagnol, for “La belle meunière”. He died in Montmartre, at the Villa des Arts, where he lived in a workshop pavilion, near his friends, the painter Louis Marcoussis and the writer Marcel Jean.
His style, elegant and fluid, is illustrated in the great tradition of portraitists of this happy time. His works should quickly gain access to his elder, the renowned Jean-Gabriel Domergue (1889-1962), another specialist in this highly valued know-how.