Jean Vigoureux

Vigoureux returned to certain images and themes. His Indochina landscape painted on wood in 1958, Jungle River, was based on L’Arroyo, an oil on canvas exhibited twenty years earlier in his first U.S. gallery show. The painting depicts a calm river amid lush foliage. An epiphyte, likely a bromeliad, grows on a fallen tree branch, with a pink flower at its center and spiky green leaves.

After the war, details about his life and career are scarcer. Art historian and collector Edan Hughes noted that his paintings included "landscapes and historic landmarks." In later years, Vigoureux made more landscapes, and many of these were in oil on wood instead of canvas. Autumn in Bar Harbor, Maine (November 1955), oil on wood, features rocks, a stream, and trees in autumnal shades of red and gold.

In 1942, Plantin Press in Los Angeles published Twenty-Eight Drawings of Paris, a limited-edition portfolio (300 copies) of drawings by Vigoureux depicting daily life in the French capital on the eve of World War II.

He had an exhibit at the American Contemporary Gallery in Hollywood, from January 31, 1942 to February 17, 1942. From the gallery’s pamphlet: "Like his compatriot, the great novelist Andre Malraux, Jean Vigoureux combines with his artistic talent that profound political understanding and that genuinely progressive outlook which have achieved a perfect unity of artistic form with a political content which is not only satirical as in most of the drawings, but often, especially in the paintings, full of that dramatic and emotional quality which is indeed one of the truest aspects of the struggle of modern society." The Los Angeles Times gave a more bleak assessment: "Jean Vigoureux, a young French painter now in Hollywood, sees a world steeped in gloom."

On September 21, 1942, in Los Angeles, Jean Vigoureux enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Documents show he was both married and a United States citizen. His term of service was "Enlistment for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law."

Defense Malt, painted c. 1942, depicts a young couple in wartime enjoying a "malted" in a malt shop.

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."

Two of Vigoureux’s drawings from the book were published in The Clipper magazine, January, 1941, with text explaining they were "part of a series on Paris, before its downfall…done with the intention of portraying the wretched state of the French working class, even before the Nazi oppression. Opposition is a good example of how Vigoureux shows the conflicts of our time by contrasting the people who live in it. He personalizes the struggle of young people everywhere against the false conventions of their societies, in this biting scene of a young couple returning from a grocery store and bravely facing the sneers of a wealthy old man and woman."

Vigoureux exhibited the works in Los Angeles at the Raymond & Raymond Galleries, March 14 to April 5, 1941. The Los Angeles Times wrote: “Ordinary persons shown as they go through the drab routines of daily existence are the subject matter of Jean Vigoureux…He finds individuals humorous in a way that often impels him to hint at caricature as he draws them. He is meticulous in his technique, leaving nothing to chance, and seeing that everything is stated to the smallest detail."

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. 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.”

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.

In #27, Bookshop, book enthusiasts crowd the small shop. A man with a pipe in his mouth carries a book titled Fracas in Beverly Hills by Homer Evans, a playful nod to a series of actual detective novels written by the author of the introduction to Twenty-Eight Drawings, Elliot Paul, in which the lead detective’s name is Homer Evans, including Fracas in the Foothills: A Homer Evans Western Murder Mystery and Open Space Adventure (Random House, 1940). The man in the back of the book store is holding a map with U.S.S.R. on the left side and United States on the right, with "Torpedoed Ocean" indicated in large block letters on the left-hand side. Le Bourremou has a new subtitle: "The Daily Organized Lie." To the left, a bespectacled man in a hat, with a full beard, is reading Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler but the book is upside-down, and the author's name is "Adolf Schwein" (German for "pig.") La Condition Humaine (English title: Man's Fate) by Andre Malraux sits prominently on the table. Malraux was a target of the Otto Abetz blacklisting of authors forbidden to be read, circulated, or sold in Nazi-occupied France.

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." 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." 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 ."

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." The San Marino Tribune wrote:

Jean may have met his future wife Fanny G. Varnum in France, where she researched the life of François Jean de Chastellux [fr] 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). Sometime after 1937, Jean and Fanny were in the United States and married, with a marriage license obtained in New York.

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 Parisian journal Comoedia called it a promising debut for a young painter of "frank and personal talent." Jean also exhibited in the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon des Independants in Paris.

The late 1930s found Jean and Fanny living in California. She was a music professor at the University of Southern California. Jean worked at RKO studios in Hollywood.

An untitled painting of uncertain date shows a very different side of Vigoureux the political provocateur steeped in gloom. The oil on canvas depicts a black-robed figure (perhaps a self-portrait) in a dense jungle standing behind a seated Buddha with a broken arm; the Buddha is exactly like the one in Vigoureux's 1930s drawing Ruins of Angkor, but its location and scale are very different. The Buddha in the drawing is gigantic, the mute witness of an unpleasant scene of raucous soldiers playing tourist and cajoling a hapless woman. In the painting, the Buddha is life-size and its shadowy, secluded surroundings project an atmosphere of serenity, meditation, and mystery.

Because of military conscription, Jean was required to serve in the French Army for one year (c. 1927-1929). Following was another year with the French Army in French Indochina. This decision was later described in a review for a show held at the United American Artists Gallery in San Francisco from May 4–21, 1941; “This conviction and uncompromising courage has come to the 33-year old artist through personal experiences which include a first-hand knowledge of the workings of French (and English) imperialism when he voluntarily extended his period of compulsory military training in the French Army by another year in order to be able to visit French Indo-China.”

Jean was 14 when his parents divorced on July 5, 1922. Pierre subsequently married (April 30, 1924) and divorced (October 20, 1926) Yvonne Stern. Jeanne married a tenor named Edgar Allemann. While Jean retained the name Vigoureux, Fernand and Madeleine decided to adopt their mother's maiden name, Fonssagrives.

Pierre served in the French Army in World War I from 1914 to 1918 and received the Croix de Guerre, with Honorable Mention. After the war, he was commissioned by the French state to make war memorials in various locations across France. He also exhibited at the National Society of Fine Arts (1920-1922) and the Salon des Tuileries (1923-1934). He became director of the National School of Fine Arts of Dijon (1935-1942) and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1936.

Jean Henri Vigoureux (December 21, 1907 – March 30, 1986) was a French-born artist who became a United States citizen. He was best known for his sardonic, unflinching, politically provocative drawings of daily life in pre-World War II Paris and in French Indochina, where his mother was born and where he traveled as a young man. He was the first-born son of French sculptor Pierre Vigoureux [fr] and the older brother of celebrated photographer Fernand Fonssagrives.

Jean Vigoureux was born in Paris. His parents were the French sculptor Pierre Vigoureux [fr] (born in Avallon, France on April 4, 1884) and Jeanne Lise Marie Emma Fonssagrives (born in 1887 in Saigon, Vietnam), a singer and pianist. Pierre and Jeanne married on October 17, 1907; Jean was born two months later. They had two other children, Fernand (born June 8, 1910) and Madeleine, (born c. 1914).