Marcel Cramoysan

Marcel Cramoysan was born in Étretat on 1 January 1915 and became a pupil of Robert Antoine Pinchon, the Post-Impressionist master of the École de Rouen, whose sense of light and colour he carried into the second half of the century. Painter and lithographer, he was a figurative artist through and through, and landscape — Norman first of all, but also Breton, Provençal, Corsican, Spanish and Italian — is the heart of his work.

He also painted still lifes and flower pieces, circus and fairground scenes and rare portraits, with a warm palette and a brush that is loose without ever losing the drawing.

Cramoysan decorated the school of Étretat with canvases of La Fontaine’s fables and Perrault’s tales; at its opening in 1957 the school was hailed as ‘the most beautiful in France’. He exhibited for decades in Rouen, Paris and Normandy and his work is in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen and other Norman collections.

He died at Bois-Guillaume, near Rouen, on 26 April 2007. Since 2011 the Espace Cramoysan in Étretat has kept his memory in his native town.