Alfred MANESSIER
1911–1993, France

Alfred Manessier was the only son of a wholesale wine merchant. His paternal grandfather was a designer and cutter of ornamental building stone. He grew up in Abbeville and Amiens and at the fishing port of Le Crotoy, where he visited his maternal grandmother who was a ropemaker. There he painted pictures of fishing boats and the bay of the river Somme; he responded to the play of light over the river.