Poet, painter and musician, he was brought up in an environment which was favourable to artistic vocations – his father was a well known librarian from Rouen, his older brother an architect and his younger brother a sculptor.

After flirting with journalism in Paris, he veered towards painting and enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Indifferent to fashion, he painted landscapes and still- lives, playing with the chromatic balance, light effects and the balance of forms.

His oeuvre, largely destroyed by bombs, would hardly be added to after the war. He completely stopped painting in 1948.