Late Mid Century French pastel drawing on paper of a farmer harvesting wheat by Jean Arène. Signed and dated bottom right, in modern black metal frame with black card mount.

A charming rendition of a farm worker harvesting corn with a scythe. Arene has a magical ability with a few deft strokes of the chalk to create all the feeling of place and movement. We can feel the heat of the South of France sunshine beating down on the back of the worker. The sunlight setting the whole scene in atmospheric shadows. A typical southern French scene that Arene illustrates so well in his drawings and paintings.

Jean Arène was a student of August Chabaud, a highly sought after French artist in Provence who in turn took his inspiration from Cezanne. After a stint in 1949 at the School of Fine Arts in Marseille, then a year in Paris in 1950 with the poster artist Paul Colin, Jean Arène returned to Marseille the following year where he founded the "Group of under 30'' with Trofimoff, Trabuc, Zutter and Mela and began painting as an autodidact, while earning a living in advertising and decoration. His first exhibition dates from 1956. Then, from 1957, Jean Arène left the city for the countryside, which served as his base for many trips, often hitchhiking and backpacking, but always accompanied by a pencil and a sketchbook: Spain, Morocco in 1957, West Africa in 1960, (followed by an exhibition in Dakar), Northern Europe (Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Lapland , Lofoten, Netherlands and Belgium) In 1963 a trip to Tunisia. Then in 1966 his first retrospective in Toulon. In 1970 Arène left for the United States and Mexico, followed two years later by West Africa again: Tassili, the Sahara and Algeria. He exhibited extensively in Provence and the Gard: Aix-en-Provence, Uzès, Avignon, La Ciotat and Cassis. But his travels also led him to exhibit abroad: Dakar, Ouagadougou, French cultural centres in Algeria, Morocco and Indonesia, where he also started preparing one of his books which later became a series.