Jean De Botton (French 1898-1978)
Born in Salonika, Greece, Jean de Botton studied frescoes at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris under Antoine Bourdelle, Bernand Naudin, and worked as an assistant to his master Paul Baudouin. He was an official painter at the crowning of H.M. King George VI, at the Westminster Abbey, London, 1937. For years, he maintained homes in Paris and New York, but in 1945 he established his main residence in New York, and in 1977 he became a U.S. citizen.
'Doyen' of the international jet-set, de Botton's career largely evolved around important commissions from European royalty and wealthy American patrons. The wider American public became familiar with his work during the 1930's, through his murals, decorating pavilions at the Carnegie Institute Internationals at Pittsburgh, Boston and Chicago, as well as through his many one-man shows at the Rockefeller Centre (1937), The Caroll Carstairs Galleries (1937) and Knoedler & Co. (1942). The Boston, Philadelphia, San Diego and Seattle museums all hosted his shows.
His paintings appeal through their precision of design that leaves nothing to chance and very little to instinct, in combination with an acute sensitivity to complex chords of colour, and a quick response to the kind of experience that turns an artist into an interpreter rather than a manipulator of paint.
Public collections include
Albertina, Vienna
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh
Dallas Museum, Dallas
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris
Museum of Art, Atlanta
Museum Richartz, Cologne
Norton Museum, Palm Beach
San Diego Museum