Jean-Marie Toulgouat was born in 1927 in the village of Giverny, infamous for being the home of Claude Monet, just nine months after Monet's death. His connection to the great French painter was through Toulgouat's grandfather, the American painter Theodore Butler, who had married Suzanne Hoschedé, daughter of Monet's second-wife. Jean-Marie Toulgouat was thus Monet's great-grandson by marriage and he was born, grew up in and died at Giverny - just around the corner from Monet's home and garden. It was there, in Monet's old house and studio, among his late canvases, that the young Toulgouat played - as contemporary photographs reveal. It wasn't just Monet's gardens and paintings that Toulgouat witnessed first hand, assimilated and came to admire: there was also Monet's outstanding collection of paintings by his friends to discover - works by Pisarro, Manet, Cezanne, Renoir.
In his lifetime Toulgouat exhibited in France, The Netherlands and the USA. He also had regular shows in London. The late, great critic Brian Sewell was one admirer. 'Often the pictures work both as a sea of colour and as an organized pictorial distance, as bright abstraction and the reality of summer heat,' Sewell wrote in World of Interiors back in February 1987. 'Nothing is left to accident or serendipitous disorder - the limited palette and the underlying discipline of the technique ensure that the effects are precisely predictable, and that no picture expresses more or less than Toulgouat intended, in spite of the impressions of breath, speed and spontaneity implied in the handling ... The inheritance from Claude Monet is unmistakable.'