Jean TEXCIER (1888-1957) Rouen, View of Bon Secours (circa 1930) Oil on canvas, signed lower left 65.5 x 81 cm Jean Texcier, painter, man of letters, illustrator and French journalist. born in Rouen on October 6, 1888 and died on March 22, 1957. Born of a Republican father, founder of the newspaper La Dépêche de Rouen, Jean Texcier joined the French Workers' Party in 1903. While a law student, he founded the Rouen Student newspaper. In 1909, he joined the SFIO. Reformed in 1914, Jean Texcier first followed his ministry in Bordeaux then, in 1915, enlisted for the duration of the hostilities. Seriously wounded in Champagne, he served as a telephonist; a volunteer for dangerous missions, he was decorated several times. He came back a pacifist, boasting of having gone to war without using his gun. Painting was his main activity during the interwar period, he participated for thirty years in the Salon des Indépendants. His friend, the painter Pierre Dumont gave him some advice, but very quickly, he had no other masters than the great ones he was going to consult at the Louvre and especially the inhabited landscape because what interested him was the man During the Second World War, he quickly joined the Resistance. As early as July 1940, he wrote a “Little Dignity Manual”: Advice to the Occupied. He will follow it up in November with Propos à l'Occupé then with Lettres à François and finally with La France delivered where he collects documents on the collaboration. He participated in the creation of the Liberation movement and will sit from 1943 on the commission of the clandestine press. After the Liberation, Jean Texcier sat on the Consultative Assembly. From 1946 to 1948. His activity as a journalist came to the fore, to the point of making him abandon painting. Columnist at Combat at the start of the newspaper, he was the political director of the newspaper Libé-Soir, which succeeded Liberation in broad daylight. He also directed the weeklies Gavroche and Clarté, collaborated with the Nouvelles littéraires, the Populaire, the regional socialist newspapers, and especially the Populaire-Dimanche where his literary column was tasted and where, under the signature of Jean Cabanel, After his death in 1957 , a Committee of Friends of Jean Texcier was founded. He published a book, Jean Texcier a free man and, with the agreement of the Center for training journalists, awarded a scholarship to young students noted for their work. Jean Texcier was Commander of the Legion of Honor. He was also decorated with the Military Medal, the Croix de guerre 1914-1918 and 1939-1945. Sources: Romain Ducoulombier, Comrades!, Perrin 2008. Jean Texcier, “Painting: Alfred Veillet” The friendship between Texcier and Veillet, on gallica.bnf.fr, Triptyque, Paris, November 1928.
