MARCEL BERNANOSE (1884-1952)
He was born in Valenciennes (France) in 1884.
He grew up in Nancy, where his father Jules was a contractor in public works.
He arrived in Indochina at the very beginning of the 20th century and remained there between 1905 and 1920.
In 1910, he was Chargé de Mission to the Governor General of Indochina. Also attached to the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient, he studied vernacular art and published a number of papers, including Les Ouvriers d'Art au Tonkin in 1913 and a report on the fourth expedition of the French Artistic Friendship-annamite in 1914. In 1922 he published a reference book on Decorative Arts in Tonkin. At the same time, he developed as an enlightened amateur a real career as a draughtsman, painter and engraver. He returned to France in the early 1920s, he exhibited at the salons (Nancy, Paris 1928 and 1929...) his landscapes of Lorraine, the Pyrenees, views of Paris, from the Midi to Villefranche-sur-mer or Saint-Tropez as well as some memories of Extrême-Orient. He also painted some beautiful views of Italy. In 1922 he received the Grand Prix at the colonial exhibition in Marseilles. Out of competition at the Paris Decorative Arts exhibition in 1925, he collaborated with the architect of the Indochina Pavilion and created a set of furniture. He died in 1952 at the age of 68, leaving behind an important collection of pictorial works. His workshop was successfully dispersed in February 2017 by the artist’s descendants.