FAR EAST,
A WESTERN LOOK

PAUL JACOULET AND KOREA

Paul Jacoulet's relationship with Korea was emotional as was his relationship with his mother, Jeanne. It is indeed the country where, in the 1930s, lived his mother whom he loved so much. When her husband died in 1921, leaving Paul alone in Tokyo, Jeanne had to return to France. A young Japanese, Hiroshi Nakamura, who was her student in French, then accompanied her. A brilliant student, doctor of science at the Sorbonne University in 1924,and one year later a researcher at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, he married Jeanne in 1926. After he had been appointed doctor of medicine at the Imperial University of Tokyo, Jeanne joined him in 1929 and there reunited with his beloved son. Promoted to head of the department of medicine at the Imperial Keijo University in Seoul, Hiroshi Nakamura and Jeanne settled permanently in Korea.

Paul then made frequent trips there : from Christmas 1930, with his dear friend Yujiro Iwasaki, then almost every year of the decade. During his stays, he took little part in the social and university life led by Jeanne and Doctor Nakamura and he prefered to observe, with attention and admiration, the habits and customs of the Korean population, rich in a long and brilliant civilization, scarred by Japanese colonization. His travels across the Korean peninsula have been numerous as evidenced by his works often located with precision. Each time he brought back with him a large number of drawings and watercolours, and many of which have served later as the basis for magnificent prints which have been exhibited in Seoul from 1936 and where his notoriety has increased until today. He met there in 1935 Elizabeth Keith while passing through Korea but we have no report of this meeting between the two most representative artists of the Far Eastern movement. His last stay took place in 1940 shortly before the death of his mother.

Korea was also the country of his adopted family : in 1931, a young Korean, Jean-Baptiste Rah, became the assistant of Paul Jacoulet, and later his younger brother, Louis, joined them in Tokyo. From that moment they shared his life, daily "little hands" for the realization of the prints whose production Jacoulet began at a high pace in 1934, as well as for the good running of the house and the workshop, first in Tokyo then, during the war, to Karuizawa. The two brothers also often served as models and Louis Rah was Paul's faithful companion until his death in 1960. As an ultimate mark of affection for this chosen family, Paul Jacoulet officially adopted Thérèse, Jean-Baptiste Rah's daughter, in 1951. She has been his heiress and in 2013 she decided to donate all his works to the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

Paul Jacoulet took always a look at the "land of the morning calm" with emotion and tenderness and the Koreans he painted, young or old, often simple servants or artisans, are all of a vibrant humanity. Few artists have succeeded in capturing with such precision both the soul of a people and the objects and clothing of their daily life, in particular the finesse of traditional hats. Abused for decades by two powerful neighbours, China and Japan, the Koreans then bore within them the marks of a tragic history and the sadness of a lost independence. But they also show the pride in a rich culture and ancestral customs that Jacoulet's line and colours has offered to posterity.

The collection