Nashville Arts Magazine

Bernard de Clavière | Animalier Extraordinaire

Tennessee State Museum

Upon entering a condominium in a Nashville suburb, one steps into the world of a French count, replete with elegant Aubusson tapestries, Louis XVI furnishings, and miles of Baroque paintings. A Borzoi greets visitors in a foyer steeped in the unmistakable patina of aristocracy before a nattily dressed gentleman welcomes his guests into his studio. Like a spider weaving his prey into a web of oils, Bernard de Clavière begins his artistic dialogue, stopping at one painting and then another, commenting, remembering, gesticulating, and pointing out shadow and texture, and doing it all with a decidedly European flair.

Born in Lyon, France, the artist summered in the countryside of the Chateau de Noailles in the Limousin region, where he was surrounded by his mother, his cousins, and all types of animals. It was a German-occupied France, however, where all the cars had been commandeered, and the only way to get to town was by horse and buggy. A nine-year-old de Clavière had his eye on that horse and asked the farm manager to bring the animal to a nearby tree, where the fearless boy jumped from a branch and mounted the horse without a saddle while putting a homemade bit in its mouth. “He was born to ride,” observers noted. And aided by a few years of training with master instructor Monsieur Charpentier, de Clavière’s love affair with the horse was in full gallop.

As a self-described man of many disciplines, de Clavière couldn’t decide between a career in the army like his grandfather, jumping and showing horses, fencing, or solving public relations problems. He chose the latter and moved to Paris, where he worked in an office during daylight hours and spent his nights drawing his beloved horses. With the great museums of the city beckoning, he studied the techniques of such Old Masters as Velazquez and Poussin and began what he describes as “throwing paint.”

De Clavière said he became particularly obsessed with painting animals, influenced by the art of George Stubbs and Jean-Baptiste Oudry, both renowned animaliers. He explained that he felt his painting style improved as he experimented with light and mixing his subjects with the background. The artist noted that under the direction of Count Xavier de Porét, an Academy teacher, and Etienne Lambert, who was the paintings restorer at Versailles, he eventually discovered his own classical style. In 1972, New York’s Wally Findlay Galleries featured some of de Clavière’s work, but it was at his 1975 exhibition at the John Partridge Gallery, London, where he had his first sold-out show.

During one of his early trips to America, de Clavière recalls, his work was well received by J. T. Lundy, the owner of Lexington, Kentucky’s renowned Calumet Farms, a thoroughbred breeding and racing facility, who commissioned him to paint the farm’s prize-winning stud, Alydar. So pleased was Lundy with the outcome, de Clavière was engaged to create portraits of several more Kentucky stallions and mares. The horse world had discovered both a painter and a Frenchman who innately understood the special bond between horse and rider. Today, the Keeneland Race Track Association and the Kentucky Horse Park Museum hold works by de Clavière in their collections.

At an exhibition in Palm Beach in 1978, de Clavière had the good fortune to meet Nashville’s Guilford Dudley, former ambassador to Denmark, with whom he struck up a friendship based on their mutual interests in horses and hunting. This resulted in stag hunts in France and fox hunts in Nashville, as well as portrait commissions from several prominent Music City natives, to be painted sitting astride their horses. The selection of sitters included Albert Menesee, Alice Hooker, “Teenie” Hooker Buchtel, Brownlee Currey’s daughters, and Sidney McAlister. The count then began to commute between Nashville and Europe, staying in each place six months at a time, and he views Nashville as his “beginning of life in America.” On one of his stateside jaunts, de Clavière was befriended by Henry Hooker, who introduced him to John Sloan and Calvin Houghland of the Hillsboro Hounds. Luckily for the artist, more portrait requests ensued.

As work visas became more difficult to obtain, de Clavière traded his bi-continental lifestyle for New York City, where he lived from the late ‘80s to the mid ‘90s. A writer for The Wall Street Journal discovered his paintings at an auction house exhibition in the Big Apple and anointed him as “one of the leading animaliers of the 20th century.” It was during this period that the Westervelt Press commissioned de Clavière to paint a series entitled Working Dogs of the World. Probably his most famous commission, however, came from the French ambassador in London, who asked him to paint Queen Elizabeth’s black mare, Burmese, and her Corgi, Smokey, in front of Windsor Castle for a state gift from France to Her Majesty. “They wanted the painting in four days . . . it was the fastest painting I ever did,” reflects de Clavière. “I met with the Queen, a souvenir in my life, and she later marveled at the eye of her horse that I had managed to capture on canvas.”

The artist and his wife, Barbara, decided to return to Nashville in June of 2002 for many reasons: they adored the slower pace and ease of lifestyle; they were looking for “four seasons and a rolling landscape,” and they were fond of their network of old friends like Brownlee and Agneta Currey, Jack and Melinda Bass, and Henry and Alice Hooker, who all share the de Clavières’ penchant for riding, hunting, and skeet and trap shooting. Nashville also offered them a capacious metropolitan milieu peppered with a diversity of residents, a vibrant art scene, and a level of culture, mixed with quality imported foods, in a more temperate climate. “History, hunting, and horses are what Bernard chooses to talk about,” says Mdm. de Clavière, “and there are a million people here that can talk about that.”

Currently, de Clavière is focused on a new project: designing the paintings and interior friezes for the royal arena in Qatar. During his Kentucky days he met Judy Forbis, the president of the Egyptian Society for Arabian Stallions, who became enamored of the artist’s work and commissioned three paintings of prize-winning stallions. Twenty years later, Forbis called de Clavière with the news that a billion-dollar, world-class horse arena was being constructed in Qatar, and he had been selected to decorate the structure with his paintings. “I would love to start an academy of dressage for Arabian horses,” mused de Clavière. “I am a trainer not a competitor.”

He has practiced his art form for more than forty years, with his paintings sought out by collectors in twenty-three countries (American designer Ralph Lauren owns one). In looking back on his almost-half-century work and assessing his particular style, de Clavière said: “Everything in painting is mental. It’s a series of triangles, lines, and what you discover in addition to what is planned. That’s the important part. The execution is nothing compared to the preparation. I believe art is the shortest road between life and the inexpressible.”

by Mary Unobsky | photography by Jerry Atnip

Editor’s note: Sixty-eight of Bernard de Clavière’s paintings and drawings will be on view in an upcoming exhibition entitled Bernard de Clavière: Animalier Extraordinaire at the Tennessee State Museum, located at the corner of Fifth and Deaderick, from June 17–August 22, 2010. There is no admission charge.

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