appointed to the post of professor of manufactured fabrics at the school in 1940. In the 1940s Fontayne preferred to exhibit regularly at the Salon des Indépendants, rather than at the other Parisian salons. Remaining faithful to his Vieilles maisons in the Périgord and Aveyron, the painter continued to show Languedoc landscapes and paintings of flowers until 1950. Less productive as the years passed – he rarely exhibited more than two works per salon after 1940 – in 1942 Fontayne answered the call of the landscape painter André Dauchez, who invited him to take part in the first ever National Indépendant show, a salon that broke with the official shows. Main exhibitions In 1942 the Galerie Bailly and later, in 1946, the Galerie Allard made themselves available to Fontayne. In 1943, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris invited the artist to take part in a group show. Due final homage was paid to Fontayne during his lifetime, this time from his profession, with a solo show at the Maison des Artistes, in October 1947. René Fontayne died five years later, on 17 September 1952, in the modest village of his birth, Vergèze, from which he drew the noble simplicity of his art. Two years later the Galerie Van Ryck in Paris devoted a retrospective to his landscapes painted in southern France that featured forty-five canvases, inspired by his travels in the Gard, Aude, Aveyron and Tarn. Exhibitions (non-exhaustive list) René Fontayne - 20 October - 10 November 1933, Nouvelle Galerie Simonson, Paris Rétrospective René Fontayne - 1954, Galerie Van Ryck, Paris French Naturalist Painters 1890-1950 - 12 June - 7 July 2012, The Fleming Collection, London References P. -R. Roland Marcel, Le tapis moderne, in La Renaissance de l’Art Français, Paris, January 1928, p. 163. P. Sentenac, Le carnet d’un curieux, in La Revue, Paris, March 1931, p. 116. G. Varenne, 1933. Le XXIIIèmeSalon des Artistes Décorateurs, in Art et Décoration, revue mensuelle d’art moderne, vol. 42, Paris, 1933, p. 194. External links French Naturalist Painters 1890-1950 exhibition - 29 January - 16 February 2013, Galerie de l'Association des Amis de Gustave de Beaumont, Geneva 1891 births 1952 deaths Modern painters 20th-century French painters 20th-century French male artists French male painters