Jean Henri Vigoureux (1907–1986) was a French-born American artist.
Early life Jean Henri Vigoureux was born on the 21 December 1907 in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, to Pierre Vigoureux (1884– 1967) and Jeanne Fonssagrives (1887–). Vigoureux's father, born in Avallon, was a sculptor. Vigoureux's mother, born in Saigon, French Indochina (present-day Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), was a singer and pianist.Pierre Octave VIGOUREUX, geneanet.org, retrieved July 2, 2021."T.S.F.", Le Temps, April 29, 1925, pg. 4: The item noting "Radio-Concert avec le concours de Mme. Jeanne Fonssagrives" describes her as a singer and pianist in a radio concert broadcast from the Eiffel Tower in 1925. Vigoureux had two younger siblings, Fernand Fonssagrives and Madeleine. Both of Vigoureux's siblings adopted their mother's maiden name following their parents divorce in 1922.
Military service Under French conscription laws, Vigoureux served a mandatory one year term in the French Army (c. 1927-1929) and subsequently volunteered for an additional year of service in French Indochina. A 1941 exhibition review in San Francisco's United American Artists Gallery later characterized this decision as an opportunity that provided the artist with direct insight into French colonial administration.
Career in the United States Jean and his father both exhibited works at the Salon de l'Essor in Dijon in 1933, where Jean's works included his painting La Boulangerie.The painting was reproduced in Mobilier et Décoration, January, 1933., p. 499. The Parisian journal Comoedia called it a promising debut for a young painter of "frank and personal talent."Rambosson, Yvanhoé. "Les Beaux Arts: A Dijon, une renaissance régionale s'affirme avec le Salon de l'Essor", Comoedia, October 11, 1933, p. 3. Jean also exhibited in the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon des Independants in Paris."Jules Kievits Bids Public to Exhibition–Contemporary French Art Work Shown," Pasadena Star-News, December 1, 1938.
Jean may have met his future wife Fanny G. Varnum in France, where she researched the life of François-Jean de Chastellux and wrote a doctoral thesis submitted to the Faculty of Letters, University of Paris, published in 1936 as Un philosophe cosmopolite du XVIIle slecle, le chevalier de Chastellux (Paris: Librarie Rodstein).Lefebvre, G. "Mélanges", Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 17e Année, No. 97 (Janvier-Février 1940), p. 48. Sometime after 1937, Jean and Fanny were in the United States and married, with a marriage license obtained in New York.Ancestry.com, New York, NY U.S. Marriage Licenses, Indexes 1907-2018 Name: Fanny G. Varnum Spouse: Jean H. Vigoureux, retrieved August 2021.
The late 1930s found Jean and Fanny living in California. She was a music professor at the University of Southern California.Fanny G. Varnum, Class of 1931, University of Southern California, El Rodeo Yearbook, Professor of Music, retrieved August 2021. Jean worked at RKO studios in Hollywood.RKO Radio Pictures Studio Records, Online Archive of California, oac.cdlib.org, Set 1: Payroll Start and Close Cards, Vigoureux-Wall, box PRC-135 retrieved September 2021
Jean's first gallery show in the United States was May 5–30, 1938, at the Chelsea Galleries in Hollywood. The Los Angeles Times wrote: "The paintings, which strongly assert the third dimension, are of the deliberately 'proletarian' sort, the figures of workmen and their families clumsily drawn in gloomy colors to convey the idea of their thwarted lives. The drawings, which show an anti-imperialist slant on French officialdom in Indo-China, prove that Vigoureux is an able draughtsman and a remarkable and painstaking designer.""Visiting Frenchman," The Los Angeles Times, May 22, 1938, p. 52. The Hollywood Citizen-News wrote: "From the standpoint of originality, the oils of Jean Vigoureux…go far in the direction of excellence. He paints solidly, somberly, in a restricted range of unusual colors and tones."Hollywood Citizen-News, May 14, 1938. The French-language newspaper Le Courrier Français wrote (translated from French): "The opportunity is too rarely given to us to admire the works of a young French painter with more future than past. Mr. Jean Vigoureux gives us this opportunity. His most remarkable works are, in our opinion, the four paintings on Indo-China:The Arroyo; The Annamite Farm; Annamese Workers; Ruins of Angkor ."Le Courrier Français (Los Angeles, Calif.), May 27, 1938, Library of Congress Control Number sn95061249
In November 1938, Vigoureux had a show at the Kievits Galleries in Pasadena. In the Pasadena Star-News Jules Kievits described his work as "Modern, but not insane. Colorful, although subdued, silver greys predominating. His subjects are chosen from real life, and he does not adhere to 'isms' nor follow any 'school."“Jules Kievits Bids Public to Exhibition - Contemporary French Art Work Shown,” Pasadena Star-News, Thursday, December 1, 1938 The San Marino Tribune wrote:There prevails a note of undeniable interest in the exhibit of eighteen oil paintings, and many drawings now on display at the Kievits Galleries…The interest is two-fold, firstly, it gives us an idea of what is felt by the young artist, at the other side of the Atlantic, and secondly, how it is expressed and rendered. The present prevailing conditions naturally strongly influenced the artist. The fifteen paintings brought with him from France, do not deal with the beauty of the landscape, city, or human beings, but enter into the present struggle of humanity, which is facing the people of France at every step. It portrays people on the street, in their shops, and in their homes. His paintings all pertain to people as they live now. How else could it be, that these observations are expressed in a low key? How else could it be, that only sparingly a note of joy, or a subject of cheer enters? The artist could not have been true to these times, when the great happenings of this day so dominate. But in every one of his works, there is a beauty of its own, a beauty rendered in a simple palette, where silver greys complement an arrangement of deep warm colors. After leaving France, the artist…went to Indo-China. It is interesting to see how the change of scenery influenced his palette. In two of his works from there, The Home of the River [River Home, Saigon] and Indo-China Farmer, light is entering his canvas, joining his very correct drawing and compositions. There also are a great many pen drawings, marvelous observation, painstaking execution, an exceptional gift for composition prevail through all of them.”The San Marino Tribune, Pasadena, CA, December 9, 1938.
The eighteen oil paintings exhibited at the Kievits Galleries:
Vigoureux exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939 in San Francisco A subsequent exhibit in San Francisco appeared at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor from November 16 to December 6, 1940.San Francisco, Cal., Call-Bulletin, November 14, 1940San Francisco, Cal., News, November 16, 1940.Fried, Alexander, The San Francisco Examiner, November 17, 1940San Francisco, Cal., Call-Bulletin , November 21, 1940. The San Francisco Examiner wrote that Vigoureux's "illustrations of French and Indo-China everyday life are elaborately complex, and they let excessive crudity pass in the hope that it will signify deep, simple feeling.”The San Francisco Examiner, Sunday, December 1, 1940, page 48.
Vigoureux had an exhibit organized by The Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago from January 3–21, 1941. From the announcement: "The works exhibited in the Goodspeed Galleries at the University of Chicago include a series of pen drawings illustrating in a striking, somewhat satirical way scenes from daily life in Paris and a number of more recent oil paintings in which the artist tries to solve certain problems of color, while the drawings continue in the striking manner of the earlier drawings.""Jean Vigoureux Paintings and Drawings", The Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago, Renaissancesociety.org, January 1941.
Drawings of French Indochina
While in the French Army, posted to Indochina, Jean had a role as an enforcer of the French Colonial Empire, but his feelings about the situation are expressed in drawings based on his personal experiences and observations, "which show an anti-imperialist slant on French officialdom in Indo-China."
Loading Precious Wood depicts laborers foisting a massive piece of timber onto an open rail car, which would ride on railroad tracks resting on the railroad ties also harvested from these forests, as described by Pamela D. McElwee in Forests Are Gold: Trees, People, and Environmental Rule in Vietnam. "Yet this 'Precious Wood' was not to be used by local people, as the best and most valuable wood was found in 'Reserved Forests'...and rights to timber sold for public auction by private contractors...with tax revenues going to colonial authorities......these reserves were inaugurated mostly near major communication routes (rivers, seashores, roads, canals, railroads) as close as possible to a place of labor."
In Vigoureux's drawing Floating Mahogany, the practice of harvesting very large trees to be floated down-river is illustrated. In Jungle Lumber Yard, cuts have been made by local workers to a large piece of timber, with stacks of cut timber neatly piled to the right. In Rubber Plantation, a French overseer sits on a horse, a shotgun strapped to his back and rounds of ammunition circling his waist, as he supervises workers at a rubber plantation. "Other products were grown on vast plantations, making huge profits for owners, including tobacco, coffee, rubber, etc."
Sometimes Vigoureux uses words on signs, newspapers, and posters within his drawings. In Opium Den, the sign on the wall reads: "It is prohibited to smoke any other opium than that of the Regie Française, which manufactures the only genuine Chandoo...", signed for the "Office of Customs and Cruelty" by Négrier (a word meaning slaver or slave trader). Although the opium trade had been outlawed, the only existing tobacco monopoly of France was actually created by the Regie Company, operating as La Societe de la Regie co-interessee des tabacs de l’empire Ottoman. This tobacco company was run by the government itself. The sign insinuates that the French government was in charge of the opium trade.
In Street Scene, a poster on the wall advertises "Strongboxes for industrialists and bankers." A barefoot man drives his male passenger through the streets in a rickshaw. A young boy runs in the street, carrying the bourgeois newspaper Le Bourremou, whose subtitle is Organ of the Plutocracy. The headline reads, "The unyielding spirit of the workers rouses the dissatisfaction of the Bosses." A sign on the back wall reads: "Sale. Furniture & real estate by auction. A straw hut having only served 12 generations. A wooden bunker. three pa mats. A low hold. A ke-kouan. Two hats. Conical, one of which is wood. A bag of rice. Military pants, etc. etc. Tax entry."
In The Ruins of Angkor, a group of French soldiers try to get a young Cambodian girl to pose in the photograph with them. Several locations of old ruins from the Khmer Empire were in the French protectorate of Cambodia. Angkor Wat was the biggest of these. An identical Buddha (but on a smaller scale) can be seen in Vigoureux's painting of a seated Buddha with broken arm.
Asia magazine published four of Vigoureux's pen-and-ink drawings (described as "watercolors") in their December 1940 issue: Marketplace (Saigon), Loading Precious Wood, Southern Indochina: Rice Fields, and Soup Vendor.Asia magazine, December 1940, pgs. 644 & 645
Twenty-Eight Drawings of Paris