Raphaël Toussaint

Raphaël Toussaint (pseudonym of Jacques de la Croix; born 25 April 1937, in La Roche-sur-Yon), is a French painter residing in the Vendée department. Landscape designer, he practices “poetic reality”. His motto as a painter is: "'Knowing how to see, knowing how to perceive, knowing how to design'"

Biography
In 1956, while studying classical singing, Jacques de la Croix, the future Raphaël Toussaint, met the one who became his wife in 1959. As a result, he met René Robin: the father of his future wife who ran a store in La Roche-sur-Yon which later became the Robin gallery. For Raphaël Toussaint, this meeting was a determining element that influenced the course of his life. "'The genesis of this rebirth [is] due to the meeting of another Yonnais, René Robin, director of the art gallery that bears his name'; explains journalist Bertrand Illegems." "“Without his father-in-law, the irreplaceable René Robin, always present in his works, who trained and supported so many painters (Albert Deman, Henry Simon, Paul Dauce, Joël Dabin, Roger Ducrot ...), Raphaël Toussaint would not have become what he is today, a magician of beauty in the service of truth”, writes journalist Hervé Louboutin."

Called to do his military service, it was in 1957 that he embarked in civilian clothes on the Sidi Bel Abbès II bound for Oran (Algeria) where he disembarked on 13 July. He studied at the Nouvion military camp near Oran at the 21st RTA. On 16 November, he was assigned to the 2nd RI 3rd company, at "ferme 35" in the Aumale region south of Algiers. Seriously wounded during the night of 8–9 April, he was repatriated to France in May and permanently retired as a major war invalid.

After this injury, Jacques de la Croix could no longer continue studying the classical singing he had practised since his adolescence. His career as a singer halted, he decided to devote himself entirely to painting, helped by his father-in-law, René Robin, and he changed his name to become Raphaël Toussaint. With René Robin, he came into direct contact with the landscape and began his first period. His painting Holidays in Saint Raphaël would determine the profile of what became the definitive expression of his art. René Robin directed him towards naive art, because he felt that his vocation is there thanks to his patience and meticulousness. Until 1970, he worked under the secrecy of anonymity in order to make sure that his choice to devote himself entirely to painting was not an adventure without a future. It was in 1965 that he began his first exhibitions in different galleries and that he was selected the following year to participate in the Salon “Comparaisons” at the Grand Palais (Paris). A few years passed where he affirmed his talent and in 1971 he was appointed Member of the Salon d'Automne. “Be congratulated and thanked, your work is beneficial, it carries within it the true values of life, the quiet and firm certainty that happiness is in simplicity, and not in money which is a lure. To build a work such as yours, in our times of anguish and iron, dear Raphaël Toussaint, is to bring us closer to the angels ... ” declares Édouard Georges Mac-Avoy, the president of Salon d'Automne, in 1990.

His life as a professional and official painter then came to light. It was in 1973 that he formalized his pseudonym Raphaël Toussaint by means of a notarial deed. In a publication in 2004, the art collector and critic Henri Griffon considers him a symbol of this movement of expression of modern primitive. “He is not an imitator, nor a follower, he is Toussaint. On the walls of a gallery, the informed eye will recognize the invoice of a great master ”, thus estimates Henri Griffon.

Paris-Grand Palais-Exposition 1982 “The Genius of the Naive”
The following year, at the Salon de la Nationale des Beaux Arts, he was appointed Associate by President François Baboulet.

He exhibited his painting, On a beautiful winter morning. This painting was stolen from the Grand Palais in Paris during the Salon de la Nationale des Beaux Arts and never found.

To pay tribute to his Mentor René Robin, whom he includes in all his paintings, Raphaël Toussaint publishes a wax seal which is affixed to the back of each of his works as a second signature.

Wanting to give a new dimension to his career, he wrote and implemented in 1990 a work of art The very rich hours of Raphaël Toussaint, prefaced by various personalities from the world of the arts including Paul Guth. The latter writes: "Raphaël Toussaint, a naive painter? ... A problem that bothers him. In France, country of labels, we stuck this one on the overcoat. And to me too. Him, in painting, me in literature for my romantic cycle of the Naive. Labels twins. Did this naive title bother you? he asks me. I answer for both of us: yes and no. Naive does not mean silly, beta, idiotic. Naive comes from the Latin word nativus, as on the day of his birth. The naive is the one who is born every day, and the world with him. It has the spirit of childhood, one of the treasures of Saint Francis of Assisi". He exhibited in numerous salons and galleries in France but also in particular in the United States (in Texas and Florida. In Paris, he exhibited at Galerie 93 du Faubourg Saint-Honoré for twenty-five years, between 1965 and 1991 (gallery closed). Locally, the Vendée department organized a major retrospective for his thirty years of painting (1964–1994). In 2001, the Sainte-Croix des Sables-d'Olonne museum, opens its doors to him for a major exhibition "Landscape or a certain regard". He regularly takes part in the Parisian Salons of which he is a member.,

Works






Awards

 * 2000 : Médaille de la ville de Paris
 * 2004 : Chevalier des Arts et Lettres
 * 2010 : Prix Francis Davis Millet

Written works

 * Hommage to the Salon Yonnais - Municipal museum of La Roche-sur-Yon
 * Book of art.
 * On the occasion of a retrospective exhibition at the Conseil général de la Vendée
 * Illustrated agenda
 * Poems
 * Illustrated agenda
 * Poems
 * Poems