Francis Jourdain

1876–1958, Paris

Francis Jourdain, a painter, printmaker and artist-craftsman, studied under Eugène Carrière and Albert Besnard. From 1895 he participated in the highly acclaimed exhibitions staged by the Société des Artistes Indépendants, the Salon d’Automne and the Libre Esthétique in Brussels. An extremely talented decorator, he subsequently excelled as a successful designer of stage scenery, furniture, coloured paper, fabric samples and other arts and crafts products. In the early part of his career Jourdain worked as a painter and etcher; his prints and paintings, which stand out for their intense colourism and lyrical atmosphere, are of a stylized, highly decorative character in keeping with the symbolist spirit. Hence he is regarded as a significant representative of modern colour etching in France.