Alan Flattmann's French Quarter Impressions Capa dura - 2002

"Alan Flattmann's lush, colorful, and atmospheric pastels of the French Quarter--the Vieux Carr1/2--beautifully capture the Proustian feeling of lost time."
From the foreword by E. John Bullard

New Orleans, Louisiana is a city haunted by the past. Nowhere is this more evident than in the narrow streets and ancient structures of the French Quarter.

Site of the original city settled in 1718, this quaint neighborhood retains the symmetrical street grid dictated by its French founders. Traces of French architecture also remain, though most buildings were rebuilt by the city's Spanish rulers after the devastating fires of the late eighteenth century. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, American design traditions began to proliferate.

The French Quarter enjoyed a similarly varied economic history. After the initial struggle to start a colony amid wild swamps, New Orleanians enjoyed years of prosperity. With goods and profits flowing in from the bustling port on the Mississippi River, New Orleans rivaled the great cities of Europe in wealth and sophistication. By the early twentieth century, however, the Quarter had fallen on hard times. It was a picturesque, but squalid, slum inhabited by poor immigrants and an increasing number of artists and bohemians. Now, this same neighborhood is a tourist boomtown protected by a dedicated preservation society, but time and progress continue to erode traces of the French Quarter's history.

Alan Flattmann has portrayed this changing scene for almost forty years. While still in high school, he began studying at John McCrady's art school in the French Quarter. After Flattmann completed his training there in 1967, he returned to teach classes until the school closed in 1983. McCrady's classical instruction and supportive influence convinced the young student that a life in commercial art was not for him. Though Flattmann earned extra money during his student days by painting tourists' portraits in historic Jackson Square, he quickly distinguished himself as a serious artist whose pictures of the French Quarter were more than mere souvenirs.

Alan Flattmann's French Quarter Impressions contains examples from every phase of Alan Flattmann's career. There are pictures of the French Market from the early 1970s, before most of its produce stands gave way to souvenir booths, and of interiors of the recently closed Kaldi's Coffeehouse. Regardless of when they were painted, each of Alan Flattmann's works perfectly captures the timeless charm and mysterious appeal of New Orleans' French Quarter.

Alan Flattmann was born in New Orleans in 1946. He studied at the John McCrady Art School on a New Orleans Art Association scholarship and won an internationally competitive grant from the Elizabeth T. Greenshields Memorial Foundation of Canada. His 1987 publication, The Art of Pastel Painting, is a standard textbook for pastel techniques.

Alan Flattmann has won many major awards in national painting exhibitions during his thirty years as an artist. He is a recipient of the 1996 American Artist Art Masters Award for pastels, a national recognition that honors America's most outstanding and gifted artists. In 1991, Mr. Flattmann was awarded the Master Pastelist distinction by the Pastel Society of America. He has also been listed in Who's Who in American Art since 1981.

Alan Flattmann's work can be found in hundreds of private and corporate collections, as well as the collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Oklahoma Art Center, Longview Museum of Art, Mississippi Museum of Art, and Lauren Rogers Museum of Art. The Bryant Galleries, located in New Orleans and Jackson, Mississippi, are the exclusive agents for his work.

New Orleans native John R. Kemp received his bachelor's and master's degrees in history from Loyola University and the University of Southern Mississippi. Formerly a staff writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, he has contributed to several publications, including Southern Accents, Fodor's, Time Out Guides, Louisiana Life, ARTNews, and Art & Antiques. He also covers the New Orleans visual arts scene for the local public television's weekly entertainment show, Steppin' Out. Currently, Mr. Kemp is an associate director at the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities.