Jean Tabaud (5 July 1914 – 3 December 1996) was a French portrait painter and war artist.
He was born Jean Gilbert Tabaud on July 5, 1914, in the small town of Saujon, France, on the Southwest Atlantic coast, north of Bordeaux.
A first career in classical dance with the Ballets Russes, was interrupted by a spine injury which forced him to give up dancing altogether. He returned to France to seek treatment for his back but instead met up with the outbreak of World War II. He was immediately drafted into the French Army, witnessed the fall of France to Germany, and was taken prisoner in 1941.
His second career as an artist started while he was a prisoner during World War II. While there, he passed the time sketching portraits of his fellow prisoners, and was shortly asked to do the same by guards, as well as the Commandant of the camp. His escape from prison led him back to Paris where he made his living as a peripatetic artist, in the evenings going from one café to another, drawing portraits of German soldiers, sailors, airmen of all ranks, charging jist a few francs each. . All the portraits he executed during this time had to be signed with the name Juvee. By the time of Germany's defeat, Tabaud had executed over 5,000 portraits between 1942 and 1944.
Following the end of the war, almost one year later, Tabaud, seeking the sun and escape from war-torn Europe, traveled to Mallorca and then to Morocco, where he lived for eight years. During this period he painted many Moroccan landscapes, as well as studies of the local people.
In 1953 he was encouraged to try his luck in the United States. He began in Hollywood, where he was immediately successful, receiving commissions for portraits from such stars as Charles Boyer, and Deborah Kerr, The French Ambassador to Mexico, while visiting Hollywood, suggested an exhibit of his works - particularly his Moroccan landscapes - in Mexico City. It was met with considerable success and was followed by two more exhibits. One in Monterrey and one in Acapulco.
Following several more critically acclaimed exhibits in Los Angeles and San Francisco, Tabaud moved to New York City in 1957, where he established his studio at 440 East 79th Street. Over the next ten years he traveled extensively, executing portrait commissions in the United States and Europe of the rich and famous, as well as the not so rich nor famous.
In addition to portrait painting, Tabaud experimented with various schools of art, most notably cubism. .
At the height of his career, Tabaud executed several paintings under the name of Leret, but was unsuccessful at marketing them. What sold was a Tabaud. What clients wanted was a Tabaud and nothing less.
It was only in 1980 that he gave up his studio in New York altogether and settled permanently in Pawling, traveling once a year to France to visit old friends.
Tabaud also excelled in painting children. Though he never had any of his own, he enjoyed painting them. After seeing one of Tabaud's exhibits in 1956, the art critic of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner said: "He gives their faces marvelous expressions: as if they are, in a spiritual sense, on the threshold of adult experiences, as if some unknown force is pulling their thoughts into a world they would much rather back off from."
In Pawling, Tabaud pleased friends and neighbors by drawing their portraits, free of charge. Whole days and evenings were spent reading the works of philosophers whose thoughts he had long wished to examine but had never had the time to do so before.
He died on December 3, 1996. Two years after his death the Village of Pawling changed the name of the winding dirt road leading to his home from Gristmill Lane to Frenchman's Lane. His final portraits, three drawings of Elizabeth Kammerer, daughter of his friend Karen Kammerer, were done in August of 1996 at his home in Pawling.
https://www.jeantabaud.com/data/german-portraits.shtml
I now know that I have 2 scheduled for Friday. And we had Fable for the evening; she was quite good. 
Good morn-noon! 
