41 x 59cm (16 1/8 x 23 1/4in)
Provenance: The artist’s studio.
Gouache on paper. ‘The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II’ from a body of work commissioned by British European Airways for a series of posters titled 'Ceremonial in Britain’. Rendered in his signature style of accurate perspective and confident handling of detail, it depicts the Irish State Coach escorted from Westminster Abbey.
Read more
Albert Victor Eugene Brenet (1903-2005) was born in Harfleur, and trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris where he was a pupil of the neo-impressionist Ernest Laurent. In 1925 he won a travelling scholarship to Equatorial Africa, and served as a deckhand on an ocean going sailing ship. In 1933 set up a Paris studio at 41 rue Lecourbe. From 1935, he began working for the magazine L’Illustration and was commissioned to record French fleet review aboard the battleship Provence. In 1936 he was appointed an official artist to the French Navy - Peintre Officiel de la Marine (POM). In 1937 he produced sketches of the coronation of King George VI and of the British fleet at Portsmouth. Queen Mary bought several of his original works that were reproduced in L’Illustration for St. James’s Palace, London.
Shortly before the Second World War, he decorated the officers messes at Saint-Mandrier and Berre aerodromes, and recorded life in the cruiser Emile Bertin. In 1942 he exhibited at the inaugural 'exposition des peintres de la Marine’ which was opened by Marshal Petain at the Casino in Vichy. As the tide of war changed Brenet joined Free French forces and was assigned as the official artist to an armoured battalion of the Marine Fusiliers on the Vosges front. In 1946 he sailed in the cruiser Montcalm to the West Indies when French gold reserves were repatriated to France.
Postwar he produced artwork for various shipping lines, airlines, the SNCF, the Marie de Paris and the French Navy aboard the aircraft carriers Foch and Clemenceau. He collaborated with fellow marine artist Marin-Marie on the launch posters for the liner France in 1961. From 1963 to 1969 he produced a series of paintings on the port of New York for the Moran Towing Corporation. In 1971, he was an official artist for at review of of the Marine Nationale off Toulon by the President of the Republic Georges Pompidou. A retrospective exhibition of Brenet’s work was held at the Musée de la Marine in 1991, and three exhibitions marked his hundredth birthday in 2003 at Perros-Guirec (Côtes-d'Armor), Le Havre and Musée de la Marine, Paris.