Bernard Charoy (1931), "The Country Farmhouse" or “Le Coeur de Ferme”

Original lithograph Signed by artistic and numbered 128/250 from original edition of 250 plus 50 AP. Image Size 24” x 18” on Arches paper printed October-November 1978.

Bernard Charoy was born in 1931 to a family of artisans, in the Lorraine region on the East of France. His creative lineage and the artistic heritage of his region were to have a profound influence on his career.

Bernard Charoy is a brilliant talented figurative artist, who continued to follow and develop his creativity instincts for nearly half a century. Slowly, but sincerely he has built up an international following of admirers and collectors. To know his work is to be enchanted by the deeply rooted sincere sentiment that they communicate. All of those who are lucky enough to know the man personally understand that Charoy is made of these very same warm and generous sentiments. Youth and all that youth signify with it's innocence and somewhat less than so, is a perpetual theme and source of inspiration to Charoy.

Discussions of painting conventionally centre on consideration of line and form, colour and brush stroke. This is true because these are the material elements that make the construction of a painting. The paintings of Bernard Charoy somehow elicit something different from conventional art critical parlance. His works are composed of the same , of course, but also of flesh, of health, of perfume and of sentiment.

It is in his native Lorraine that Charoy finds his true creative influences. The region possesses a wealth of artistic treasures that were to have an important impact on the talent and imagination of young Bernard. His visits to the Lorraine capital of Nancy were veritable artistic pilgrimages.

There is clearly a lineage with the engraver Jacques Callot, who depicted villages and bucolic scenes from the Lorraine countryside. Charoy's early paysages bear a striking resemblance in both theme and sentiment.

Art nouveau and its influences continued to flourish through the early part of this century. In Belle Epoch Paris, handsomely drawn women in various states of undress adorned the walls of cafes and cabarets to advertise everything from cigarettes and absinthes to bicycles and headache powders.

With the advent of World War I, the lively optimism and joyful sensuality of the art of illustration all but disappeared. Only with Bernard Charoy and his generation of artists did French illustration renew with its joyous past.

Charoy doesn't paint only portraits, he was also noted for some very poetic landscapes He paints the regions, he knew as a boy, the rich, humid and poetic countryside of his native LORRAINE, or the moist and mysterious lands of BURGUNDY as in one of his more popular paintings Spring Mountain.

Whether it be the mood and mystery of some secluded landscape, the delight and freshness of an adolescent girl discovering and exhorting in her own femininity, or the cool and tantalising gaze of a beautiful woman in full command of her seductive powers, Charoy's paintings always communicate a feeling.

From the early pen and ink drawings to the ambitious large scale canvases I am unmistakable sensibility in habits all of these works, meaning that they could only be signed "Charoy".