Yvonne Jammet facts for kids

Yvonne Jammet (born in 1900, died in 1967) was a talented artist from France. She was a painter and a sculptor. Yvonne spent most of her career living and working in Ireland. She also helped run a famous French restaurant in Dublin called Restaurant Jammet with her husband, Louis Jammet.

About Yvonne Jammet's Life

Yvonne Jammet was born Yvonne Auger in 1900 in Paris, France. Her parents, Félix Auger and Catherine Jammet, both owned restaurants. Yvonne studied art at two well-known schools: the Académie Julian and the Atelier Jean-Paul Laurens.

In 1928, she married her third cousin, Louis Jammet. They moved to Dublin, Ireland, to take over his father's restaurant on Nassau Street. Yvonne and Louis had two sons and two daughters. Yvonne Jammet passed away on August 30, 1967, while visiting the United States in Lowell, Massachusetts. She is buried in Deans Grange Cemetery in Blackrock, Ireland.

Restaurant Jammet: A Creative Hub

The Restaurant Jammet was a very popular place in Dublin. Many famous artists, writers, actors, and business people loved to eat there. Some of the well-known visitors included Orson Welles, Tyrone Power, Peter Ustinov, and Irish writers like W. B. Yeats and Jack Butler Yeats. Artists such as Harry Kernoff and Seán O'Sullivan also enjoyed the restaurant.

Yvonne Jammet was an artist herself, and she also supported other artists. She helped decorate the restaurant. In 1946, she worked with architect Noel Moffet to redesign the upstairs area. They gave it a simple, modern look with curved glass-block walls and exposed steel.

The Jammets became close friends with Micheál MacLiammóir, a famous Irish actor and theatre director. He staged several French plays at the Gate Theatre in 1938. When Yvonne and MacLiammóir were both in Paris, they would often go to the theatre together. MacLiammóir once described Yvonne as "exquisite, dark and smiling," like a painting by Renoir that had come to life.

Yvonne Jammet's Art Career

Yvonne Jammet was part of The White Stag group, which was a group of artists who created modern and experimental art. In 1943, she showed her paintings at Victor Waddington's Gallery in Dublin. Her exhibition included portraits, still-life paintings, and landscapes.

Victor Waddington often held parties and events at Restaurant Jammet. At one event in 1950, the artist Jack Butler Yeats received a special French award called the Legion of Honour. Yvonne Jammet also showed three of her works at the 1950 Irish Exhibition of Living Art. These were paintings titled Saint-Jérôme d'Ax (from 1947), Quillan (from 1948), and Ax-les-Thermes. In 1951, another exhibition at Waddington's gallery featured Yvonne Jammet's wood carvings and paintings.

Yvonne's artwork often had religious themes. For example, she carved figures of the Sacred Heart and Our Lady for the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary in Limerick. She also carved a piece called The twelve tribes for the Jewish synagogue in Terenure, Dublin. After a fire damaged St Michael's church in Dún Laoghaire, Yvonne Jammet donated carved stations of the cross for its rebuilding.

Her art was also shown in other exhibitions. In 1953, her work was part of a show of modern Irish art at the National Library of Wales. She also exhibited at the An Tostal exhibition in Bray in 1954, and with the Institute of the Sculptors of Ireland in 1956.