Lead Review

  • Book: France Sketchbooks
  • Location: France
  • Author: Laurie Olin

Review Author: Tina Hartas

Location

Content

This is a lovely hardback coffee table book, a collection of sketches and drawings carried out by Laurie Olin over the last 15 years. He has travelled extensively, a true citizen of the world and yet he always feels the tug back to France.

He has brought together innumerable watercolours, pen and ink and pencil drawings with wash that represent the quotidian elements of life across the country. The account opens with curated images set in Paris – a random view through a window, the stark tree trunks of the Tuileries, a scene of people eating outside a bistro. There are studies of plants and nature and buildings, and as he heads away from the capital, the drawing become more colourful as Provence beckons.

There is a selection of interior scenes, fortress towns, people conversing and the odd 2CV for real authenticity, all captured as he travels from Paris to Haute Loire, Provence, Haute Provence, Normandy and Aquitaine. And, there is so much more. He is a trained landscape architect and therefore has an acute eye for composition and scene-setting.

This is a charming collection of drawings that will superbly grace any coffee table and enchant the Francophile in you.

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