Born in Paris in 1935, Jean-Pierre Cassigneul decided at early age to pursue multiple disciplines, and became extremely proficient as a painter, lithographer, engraver, illustrator, and muralist. At the age of 17, Jean-Pierre Cassigneul held his first solo exhibition in Paris at the Lucy Krogh Gallery. Two years later, he entered the Academie Charpentier and studied under Jean Souverbie, a professor at the Inchescole des Beaux-Arts de Paris. He passed his entrance examination a year later and enrolled at the L' Inchescole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. From 1956 until 1960, Jean-Pierre Cassigneul was instructed by Chapelain-Midy. During this period, he held exhibitions in Paris and other cities. He had a contract with the Gallery Bellechasse in Paris for several years after his first exhibition at the gallery in 1965.
Since then, his work has been exhibited extensively throughout Europe, Japan and the United States, including shows at the Galerie Tivey Faucon and Galerie Bellechase, Paris; Gallery Tamenaga, Japan and Wally Findlay Gallery, New York. He has been commissioned for works by hotels and theaters and in 1993 the Bolshoi in Moscow commissioned sets and costumes for their ballet "The badly guarded Daughter." Cassigneul has also illustrated several books, including Le Tour de Malheur by Joseph Kessel. Jean-Pierre Cassigneul went on to exhibit in various group exhibitions, including the Salon d' Automne in Paris, where he was member, the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, and Meubles Tableaux (Furniture-Paintings), an exhibition held in 1977 at the Centre Beau Bourg. In this, he showed a piece of occasional furniture in the Louis XIV manner, the doors and sides of which, were decorated with female figures.
The magnetic attraction of Jean-Pierre Cassigneul's art lies in its ability to transport the viewer to an idyllic world, evoking a sense of nostalgia. His beautiful compositions of striking elegant women follow the tradition of the early 20th century French Nabis artists Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, through his use of flat colors and compressed spaces to portray everyday people and objects. His work is also greatly influenced by the Fauvre expressionist painter, Kees van Dongen, as seen most especially in the elongated and contoured female forms imbued with vibrant, expressive colors his very dramatic portraits and use of intense vibrant color. In Cassigneul's enigmatic imagery, the figures are frozen in time. His subjects remain lost in contemplation, inviting the viewer into the serenity of their world.
Le peignoir de bain is a delightful example of Cassigneul's early works. A central female figure is cloaked in a white robe, from whence the work takes its title. She is highly idealized, with heavy hooded dark eyes with blue lids, characteristic of Cassigneul's oeuvre. Her dark brown hair is finly coiffed into a bob. Offsetting the figure are two beach tents in shades of blues and greens and two sailboats pass by with sails as billowy white as her peignoir.
