Jeanmaire Edouard
Born in 1847.
Died in 1916.
Édouard Jeanmaire (1847–1916) made the landscapes of the Jura and rural life the core of his oeuvre. Pastures, farmhouses and herds are not merely picturesque accessories in his work: they organise the space and give the scenes their rhythm. In Sortie de l’étable, a large oil on canvas dating from around 1880 and held by the Musée des beaux-arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds, the passage of the animals becomes a monumental subject.
Jeanmaire observes a familiar territory, the Neuchâtel Jura, while also working in drawing and printmaking. The Bibliothèque de Genève describes his numerous naturalist studies and paintings, his etchings and his rare posters. This variety of media sheds light on the constancy of his gaze: to capture a place, the movement of a herd or the everyday presence of those who inhabit it.
The Kunstmuseum Solothurn sees in his paintings an idealised representation of peasant life. This idealising dimension does not diminish his attention to the details of nature; rather, it reminds us that the painted landscape is also a composition, a way of choosing what will remain visible.
His works are held in the collections of La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle. In Solothurn, the presentation “Imaginaires du Jura” placed Jeanmaire once again among the artists who shaped the visual memory of this region. The Bibliothèque de la Ville de La Chaux-de-Fonds preserves an important body of drawings and documents relating to the painter, which provided the basis for an exhibition in 2016.
This legacy makes it possible to read his work beyond a fixed image of the countryside: as a patient investigation into the forms and uses of an inhabited landscape.
