The chapel of Meriadec (Baden, Morbihan golf course) , dated 1910

Jean Frelaut is a delicate painter, engraver and illustrator with a precise profession. He perfectly evokes the simple and melancholy life of the Morbihan countryside, which he knew in all its aspects.  

Here, the painter represents a holy place whose spiritual atmosphere overflows throughout the painting. The chapel, with its typical architecture, is the main subject - around it, the green grass, on the right, a house and trees, on the left, an unobstructed view towards yellow and green fields. A woman wearing a white kerchief, from behind, walks barefoot on the path which surrounds the church, a jar balanced on the top of her head. The scene gives off a dreamlike atmosphere, time seems suspended: the painter takes us into the Breton dream as Douanier-Rousseau would do.  

Although born in Grenoble, Jean Frelaut grew up Breton: his family, originally from Morbihan, returned to settle in the family home for the retirement of the artist's father, general of the armies. At 18, Jean Frelaut went to Paris. He entered the studio of Fernand Cormon at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. After his studies, he traveled to North Africa. Mobilized for the First World War, he came back alive and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1919. From 1923, he joined the group of independent painters and engravers founded by Jean-Émile Laboureur and Raoul Dufy.  

He moved to Morbihan and was appointed curator of the Vannes museum in 1937. He illustrated many works, including “Les fables de Jean de La fontaine”   in 1941 and “Le roman de Renard” in 1950. Excellent engraver and author from a large body of work (more than 1,500 plates, from 1926 to 1954), the Venice Biennale rewards him with the Prize for French engraving in 1934.