Robert Vernet-Bonfort (1934-2017) French, Oil on Canvas. Painting of a European village. Inscribed "Paysage" ("landscape" in French) on back. Signed lower right. 

Overall: 29 1/2 X 33 1/2 in. 

Sight: 20 1/2 X 24 1/2 in. 

#2679 . 

Robert Vernet-Bonfort was born in Marseille in 1934, and was rendered deaf by an early childhood illness. He embraced visual arts in study and practice as a refuge from the silence of the outer world. He studied at L’ecole des Beaux-Arts in Marseille from 1948 to 1957. A frequently exhibited and lauded French artist active since the 1950s, Vernet-Bonfort’s work demonstrates the intersection of old and new masters’ techniques. When he graduated he was awarded the Prix Claverie, and he had his first gallery exhibition at the Galerie Reboul in Marseille. A few years later he won the Prix de l’UNAM for Young Mediterranean Artists. After a successful exhibition in 1964 at the Madden Galley in London, Vernet-Bonfort was awarded the Elizabeth T. Greenshields Foundation Great Award, which allowed him a year of paid study in the United States. Vernet-Bonfort identified his main influences as book illustrator Antoine Humbolt, figurative sculptor George Oudot, and celebrated painter Gustav Klimt. His work is part of the French Provencal school dominated by the sensuous colors and striking contrasts found in the rural and maritime landscapes of southern France and Spain, and his technique has been characterized as stylized realism. He died in Nans-les-Pins, France in 2017.