The Distinguished maritime and landscape artist André Bourrié is a foremost master of Modern Impressionism. A member of the prestigious Salons d'Automne and Salons des Artistes Francais in France, as well as the Official Painter of the French Navy, Bourrié is one of the most highly praised and widely -collected artists in Europe.

Yet the honor and acclaim Andre Bourrie has enjoyed have been hard won. Born in Montpellier, France, in 1936, Bourrie lost his parents at an early age and was sent to live with a distant uncle. Finding the youngster "sullen and unsociable," the hard-hearted uncle soon tired of the boy and sent him to an orphanage.

These harsh beginnings had a decisive effect on the spirit of the young artist. Forced to find solace in other things, Bourrie turned to the natural world, to the beauty of his surroundings, and found pleasure in its color, texture and forms. This pleasure was reinforced by his growing technical knowledge of color, knowledge he gained as a teenager when he took a job as a ceramist.

At the urging of a friendly philanthropist, Bourrie left the job to pursue his formal education, but sought and found work as a molder after graduating. He pursued this demanding profession for years while devoting his leisure time to cultivating his own work-to drawing and painting "for him." Traveling the French countryside on holidays and weekends, Bourrie found the subjects that, again and again, he would return to in his exquisite canvases.

In 1966, at age 30, Bourrie enjoyed his first solo and first sell-out exhibition in one. More sell-out shows, as well as accolades and awards, followed, but Bourrie continued to pursue his vocation as a molder until, in 1979, he finally retired to become an artist full time. The wait was worthwhile.

Today, Andre Bourrie is a universally acknowledged master of color, renowned for his paintings a wash with "light and tranquillity" of the French sea and countryside which are in private and institutional collections around the world.