Grand-Pere

The other night I saw the movie "The Artist." The guy in the lead role reminded me of my French grandfather.  His name was Henri and he was an artist.  This is my favorite picture of him.  It was taken when he was still a teenager, probably in the early 1920's.  My mother said he had a high fever at the time.  I never really spoke good French, and he never spoke good English, but that didn't matter when we were together.  He was funny- he was great at physical comedy.  When he drank from a champagne glass he would push his nose to one side to get it out of the way.  He drew silly pictures for us- I wish I still had some of them. I remember him making us a deck of cards and using the Jack, Queen and King as lessons in drawing facial expressions.  I do have some of his paintings and drawings- here is something he did, probably around the time this photo of him was taken.

He grew up in Paris. He never knew his father.  He lived through 2 World Wars. During the Second World War he worked for the Germans in a munitions factory while my grandmother worked for the French government in the south of France when they were made to leave Paris.  My mother lived on a farm with an older couple, strangers who took her in until the family was able to return to Paris.  When they returned life was hard- I remember my mother telling us how people mixed sawdust in with flour to make it go further- they were eating their cats.  I liked the stories of my grandfather going on his bicycle out to the country on weekends and trading women's stockings for a duck, which would live in their apartment until they ate it. They put rubber bands around the bills of the ducks so they wouldn't pinch their legs.  

My grandparents opened a store after the War.  My grandfather would paint on the weekends.  He died when I was 18.  Shortly before he died he cleaned out his oil painting box, putting the tubes of paint and brushes and little bottles of linseed oil and paint thinner and clean rags in perfect order.  He neatly wrote out notes on tips for color mixing and painting and included his color charts and sent everything home with my mother from Paris for me.  I didn't appreciate all that they meant at the time. Now I treasure them.