Paul Jamot (1863-1939) et une histoire « nationale » de l’art

Abstract

Paul Jamot (1863-1938 ) and a « national » history of art. Paul Jamot was one of the most outstanding personalities in French history of art in between the two World Wars. His character is complex : an archeologist by training, he was a curator, an art critic, a collector, a painter and a poet. A deep evolution in his outlook and his tastes took place at the beginning of the first World War. In the following period, the links between Jamot and Catholicism, and with certain artists, M. Denis, B. Dunoyer de Segonzac, were strengthened and he published numerous articles about art history, which are totally ignored today. His method was in no way dogmatic, but tried essentially to define and revive the mood of each artist. The exhibition of the painters of reality he organized in 1934 with Charles Sterling rehabilitated the Le Nain brothers, and, for the first time, showed a group of works by Georges de La Tour ; it remains to this day the most famous of the exhibitions he organized. Jamot was mostly concerned with French art, essentially painting, whose specific features he tried to pinpoint, dividing painters into two families : the classic and the « modest ».