Jared Blandford French
(1905 - 1988) U.S.A.
Painter and photographer
Jared French 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. Dissatisfied with merely describing the material world, Jared French devised a pictorial language to explore human unconsciousness and its relation to sexuality.
Jared French received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College in 1925. There in 1926, French met artist Paul Cadmus, who was briefly his lover and who became a life-long friend. After leaving Amherst, French took a job on Wall Street and then toured Europe with Cadmus between 1931 and 1933.
During the 1930s and 1940s, French was a member of the Cadmus circle that included such gay literary and artistic figures as George Platt Lynes, Lincoln Kirstein, George Tooker, Glenway Westcott, and Monroe Wheeler.
In 1937, French married artist Margaret Hoening, another artist, his and Cadmus's mutual friend. Cadmus did not seem upset with the marriage and the three were soon collaborating as members of the PAJAMA photographic group (the name of which was comprised of the first two letters of each of their given names).
The photographs taken by French, Hoening, and Cadmus are particularly important for documenting the gay and artistic community coalescing at Fire Island in the period from 1937 to 1945. The Fire Island pictures influenced French's painting during the 1940s and 1950s.
 
Archaic art from ancient Egypt and Greece inspired French's visually repetitive human figures, which represent the whole of humanity and, by extension, its mental state.
During the 1960s, French radically altered his imagery. He began drawing fantastic biomorphic creatures that, at first glance, look like weird rock formations. On closer inspection, however, fragments of human torsos, heads, pelvises, and genitalia emerge. These later works create the impression that primordial energy heaves on anthropomorphic landscapes.
Throughout his career, Jared French produced a fascinating body of imaginative art. His artistic development is palpable; while his earlier works capture psychological states of being, his later drawings and paintings seem to transform the human body into a symbol of spirit.
In the latter part of his career, French fell out of favor with art critics and art collectors. At the end of his life, he was living in Rome, virtually in seclusion.
Source: excerpts from Joyce M. Youmans' biography
Photographs: "Jared French - 1938" and "George Tooker, Paul Cadmus, and Jared French", by George Platt Lynes
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