For the first time since 1980, the Jaffrey Civic Center is hosting a career retrospective for world-renowned painter Jeanne Duval.
“Jeanne Duval: A Selection of Paintings that Reside in the Monadnock Region” runs through Oct. 31 in the Auditorium Gallery and features about 50 works spanning the artist’s career.
Duval, a Jaffrey native whose works are held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection, returned to her hometown two and a half years ago after spending most of her career working in Italy. She currently serves on the Civic Center’s board of directors.
“I’ve worked very hard my whole career, and I’ve had a really good career, and I have been very lucky. I just love what I do,” Duval said.
Known for contemporary American still lifes, landscapes, and figure paintings, Duval noted that local exhibits have been rare because her work is commissioned and shipped across the country. The inspiration for the current show struck after she realized how many of her pieces belonged to local collectors.
“Since I have been back here, people keep asking me if I was going to exhibit here, and one night – maybe it was last winter – I woke up in the middle of the night and started counting how many of my paintings are here, in the Monadnock region, and I thought, ‘That’s enough for a show,'” Duval said. “I’m also turning 70 this month, and that’s another good reason to do it.”
When Duval began reaching out to local clients about the exhibit, she found they were “ecstatic” to lend their works to the Civic Center.
For Duval, the exhibit’s timing mattered: it coincided with the Civic Center’s 60th anniversary celebrations honoring founder Marion Mack Johnson. Earlier this year, Duval helped create a display about Johnson and the Civic Center’s history.
The venue holds personal significance for Duval, who took her first drawing lesson on the front lawn at age 12 and spent hours studying art books in its library.
“This building always meant a lot to me,” Duval said.
Duval says that while many people assume she inherited her artistic talents from her mother, Charlotte Duval, a member of the American Society of Early American Decoration, she believes her talent came more from her father, August Duval.
“My parents had an antiques and lamp shop in their barn, and my father was always making sure things were in order; he had a real sense of that his whole life,” she said. “My mother did very high-end historic stenciling that required a lot of research, and her work was just incredible.”
In addition to the main gallery, Duval’s paintings are exhibited in the entryway display cases. The library features hundreds of clippings, magazines, and journals, recently retrieved from a family storage unit, all containing features, references, or reviews of Duval’s work.
“It has been a blast to see all this again and revisit it,” Duval said.
Duval is a three-time MacDowell fellow and has also received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Ingram-Merrill Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Notably, the exhibition marks the first time Duval has penned an artist’s statement.
“I’ve never, in all the years of having shows, agreed to writing an artist statement, until now,” Duval said. “In the statement, I explain why I’ve never done it. I just always felt like, I’ve done my job making the painting … why am I supposed to tell you what to think and feel?”
The statement includes a description from a show at the Spanierman Gallery, written by Jessica May, which says that Duval’s work “straddles the line between realism and surrealism.”
“The result is an art filled with quiet tension in which ordinary motifs take on a life of their own,” May writes.
After six years of teaching classes via Zoom, Duval will start a 10-week still-life painting class at the Jaffrey Civic Center.
For information, call the Jaffrey Civic Center at 603-532-6527 or go to: https://jaffreyciviccenter.com/exhibit/jeanne-duval-a-selection-of-paintings-that-reside-in-the-monadnock-region/.