Robert Fernier

French painter Robert Fernier was a distant cousin of Gustave Courbet, one of the main painters of the 19th century, and later founded the museum in his honor in Ornans. Fernier first studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Dijon, then in Paris. He mainly painted snow landscapes and traveled to the French African colonies on an extensive tour in 1949, which ended in Polynesia, where he spent the years 1962-65. There, he painted landscapes and portraits of the people of Africa and Oceania. Back in France, he devoted himself again to the Jura nature, now dazzled tropical bright colors.

The submitted picture is actually titled Neiges du Jura instead of Skieurs. It shows Walter Bugnon, who was a physical education teacher at Ste Croix, and Bibi, the painter’s wife.