Skip to main content

Presentation of the Jean Delpech collection

The Musée de l’Armée’s collections include over 800 drawings and prints by Jean Delpech, along with two of his paintings on the Second World War. They came into the museum’s collections in two phases. In 1972, the artist himself donated a selection of works on paper to the museum, which was complemented by an acquisition from his family in 2019.

The story of a collection

The 1972 donation

The arrival of Jean Delpech’s works at the Musée de l’Armée in 1972 is directly connected with the Museum’s history and the creation of its permanent gallery on the Second World War. At the time, in addition to collecting a multitude of military objects and items of equipment, Colonel de Buttet, who was the museum’s curator, also set about obtaining depictions of conflicts by artists who had lived through the war, with a view to providing a broader evocation of its battles, and their consequences on civilian populations in particular. 

Jean Delpech’s donation is of particular interest as he selected its contents himself, in collaboration with Colonel de Buttet, coming up with a corpus of his works that includes all aspects of his output relating to the Second World War along with works of varied status, enabling better understanding of the artist’s creative approach.

The 2019 acquisition

In 2019, the Musée de l’Armée was able to expand this collection by purchasing other drawings and prints produced between 1938 and 1949 from the artist’s family. The works in question belonged to the artist’s wife, Micheline Delpech (1921-2021). This second acquisition complemented the 1972 donation by the addition of a number of large-format ink drawings dating from Delpech’s military service days, along with a selection of wonderfully complex engravings and drawings produced between 1942 and 1943, depicting life under the Occupation. It also rounded off Delpech’s 1945 reportage with the addition of several preparatory sketches and drawings, providing us with further insight into his time in Germany and enabling us to refine the chronology of his creations, which are simply dated 1945.

Patrouille d’éclaireurs-skieurs, 15e bataillon de chasseurs alpins, 1938, inv. 20929-332.

Patrouille d’éclaireurs-skieurs, 15e bataillon de chasseurs alpins, 1938, inv. 20929-332 
Photo © Paris - Musée de l'Armée, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Emilie Cambier © ADAGP, Paris

"The instruction that began indoors continues in the open air, in all weathers, on the training ground, by section, by company, and then by whole battalion. And then in the wild, in single file, with ever heavier kitbags, on the plains, then in the mountains, off the roads, along paths through forests and grassland, and then on the unstable scree of mountain passes 2,000 metres above sea level. Then we attack cliffs that seem truly vertiginous.” 

Jean Delpech, Journal de guerre

An artist’s career during the Second World War

Jean Delpech’s works trace his career from the late 1930s to the end of the Second World War. Delpech described himself as an “ethnographer”. From his military service in the 15th Alpine Hunters Battalion, in which he was mobilised in September 1939, to his time in Germany in 1945 as a war correspondent with the 1st Army, Delpech’s body of work aims to be atypical, rendering the subjective vision of an extraordinarily talented artist in the midst of turbulent, ambiguous times.

“A photo is an instant sketch, useful but not enough. Veracity guaranteed, along with its corollary, platitude. Artists provide a more concise, well-composed image, all the richer as it is transposed, even imagined, but finally more accurate. Everyone can express themselves in their own way: sarcasm, epic synopsis, accuracy of detail.”

Jean Delpech, Journal de guerre

An artist at work

Jean Delpech’s wartime work forged his style. Through his originality, sense of framing, concern for detail and use of colour, it bears witness to a sensibility attentive to the world around him, right down to the slightest details. Line and brushstroke were already well-mastered when the war began, with saturated colours providing his work with a supposedly naïve aspect. Jean Delpech’s work is rooted in reality while exalting the extraordinary, ending up somewhere between fantasy, the fantastic and a visionary world.

The Delpech collection reflects the multiplicity of the artist’s intentions, and is composed of works of various kinds: finished works, studies and technical drawings alike... As regards to prints, the inclusion of elements showing different stages in the production of an engraving – in particular monotypes highlighted with gouache – has enabled the study of a key aspect of the artist’s body of work: the role of colour. 

15e bataillon de chasseurs alpins 12/30. Lorraine vers la Ligne Maginot. Par nuit glaciale, cantonnement de fortune des mitrailleurs, 1941, inv. 2019.58.37.

15e bataillon de chasseurs alpins 12/30. Lorraine vers la Ligne Maginot, 1941, inv. 2019.58.37
Photo © Paris - Musée de l'Armée, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Anne-Sylvaine Marre-Noël © ADAGP, Paris

“I’ve been promoted to corporal machine-gunner, squad leader, but that doesn’t change anything as far as my rustic existence is concerned. The real enemies are the damp and the cold: in order to defend yourself against them, you have to burrow into the straw and cover yourself with it – a metre or more after taking all your gear off – (taking care not to lose anything) after taking off your boots, your helmet and puttees, your greatcoat, which becomes a bedspread, and, wrapped up in your blanket, beret pulled down over your eyes, with just your nose sticking out as an air inlet. It’s good to huddle together in kinship, we keep each other warm and dry, the ideal number is three and the best place is in the middle, we take it in turns so that we all get the benefit.”

Jean Delpech, Journal de guerre

Strong resonance with the Musée de l’Armée’s collections

Delpech’s works dialogue with the objects in the Musée de l’Armée’s collections. The many technical drawings of weaponry and military equipment resonate directly with soldiers’ weapons, uniforms and everyday objects present in the collections. Furthermore, in the compositions he created in 1945 on the themes of imaginary trophies and tombs, Jean Delpech combines accurately depicted weaponry with religious and mythological references. These remarkably original works make Jean Delpech a truly atypical artist. 

Tombeau imaginaire d’un blindé, 1945, inv. 2019.59.53

Tombeau imaginaire d’un blindé, 1945, inv. 2019.59.53
Photo © Paris - Musée de l'Armée, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Emilie Cambier © ADAGP, Paris

http://collectionjeandelpech.musee-armee.fr/presentation-collection