Jared French
Jared French (1905-1988) was a painter who specialized in
the ancient medium of egg tempera. He was one of the masters of Magic
Realism, part of a circle of friends and colleagues who all painted
surreal imagery in egg tempera. Others include George Tooker and Paul
Cadmus.
Jared French received a Bachelor of Arts
degree from Amherst College in 1925. He met and befriended Paul Cadmus in
New York City, became his lover and persuaded Cadmus to give up commercial
art for "serious painting". In 1937 French married Margaret Hoening,
another artist. For the next eight years the Cadmuses and Frenches
summered on Fire Island and formed a photographic collective called PAJAMA
("Paul, Jared, and Margaret"). French painted numerous murals for the WPA.
Jared French's early paintings are eerie,
colorful tableaux of still, silent figures derived from Archaic Greek
statues. His later work shows "a kind of classical biomorphism," strange,
colorful, suggestive organic forms.
