# Jared French artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/jared-french/
Profile generated: 2026-05-11T04:00:00.000Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1905-02-04
- Death date: 1988-01-08
- Nationality: American
- Movements: Magic realism
- Common media: Egg tempera, Painting, Sculpture, Photography (via PaJaMa collective), Mural

## About Jared French

Jared French (1905–1988) was an American painter and sculptor born in Ossining, New York, best known for his meticulously rendered egg tempera paintings. He is closely associated with the magic realism movement in American art, alongside contemporaries George Tooker and Paul Cadmus, whose shared interest in eerie, psychologically charged figurative imagery defined a distinct strand of mid-twentieth-century painting. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, French contributed murals to New Deal public-art programs. In 1937 he married the artist Margaret Hoening French, and together with Paul Cadmus the three formed PaJaMa, a collaborative photographic collective that produced psychologically and formally inventive images of their social circle. French spent his later years in Rome, where he died in 1988. His work is held in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and is documented in the Getty Union List of Artist Names, the Library of Congress Name Authority File, and the RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History.

## Common works and media

Collectors and appraisers most frequently encounter Jared French's work in the form of egg tempera paintings on panel or canvas, often depicting enigmatic figurative scenes. He also produced drawings, mural studies, and sculptural works. Photographs from the PaJaMa collaboration with Paul Cadmus and Margaret Hoening French circulate as a separate body of work. New Deal-era mural designs and related preparatory material occasionally surface in American-art auctions. Prints and works on paper appear less commonly than paintings but are documented in institutional collections.

## Market and appraisal context

Jared French's egg tempera paintings are his most recognized works and tend to draw the strongest collector interest at auction. As a key figure in American magic realism, French benefits from sustained institutional and scholarly attention, which supports long-term market relevance. Works on paper, smaller tempera panels, and PaJaMa photographic prints each represent distinct collectible categories that may appear in Post-War, American Art, or Works on Paper sales. Appraisal should weigh medium, provenance, condition, date of execution, subject matter, and comparable public auction results. Buyers should verify attribution through documented provenance and, where available, comparison with museum-held examples.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine independently researched artist identity data with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. For Jared French, identity and biographical information has been verified against the Getty Union List of Artist Names, the Library of Congress Name Authority File, VIAF, Wikidata, the RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

## Sources

- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n93053562
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/1990
- RKD Netherlands Institute for Art History: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/29375
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500053389
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/55824515/
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3162702
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_French