At 15 he is admitted to the Institute of Applied Arts … a school which, by chance is located right opposite the bistrot (café) own by his parents (my grand-parents) native of Auvergne had moved to Paris some years before.

It is at the start of his active life that he begins to really learn his trade, a drawer at “Tolmer”, an advertising agency In Paris, doing various tasks from sweeping the agency premises to drawing labels for perfume bottles and decorating biscuits boxes and further to the creation of various publicities.

In 1930 he married my mother named Denise and whose family name “DAMOUR” was most appropriate.
In order to make a better living, he starts publishing his drawings in the Parisian press very profuse at that time : Le Rire, Rire à deux, Paris magazine, The Boulevardier (paper particularly meant for the British people living in Paris),…
It is in 1942 that his life will take a new turn !

Being asked to deliver a confidential document to a correspondent located in Valence in the department of Drôme, he was sitting on a bench at the very spot where the appointment with the correspondent had been arranged, that very bench where he was seated was right opposite the music kiosk (classified historical monument since 1982). This is where he imagined a young violonist with long hair playing all by himself in the kiosk and a young girl was listening to him with great admiration.

A number of years later the violonist was replaced by a poet and the girl became his lover.

“Les Amoureux de Peynet” were born !... and their image travelled all around the world… reproduced on porcelain, on scarves, dolls, in books, as medals, statues (as the one erected in Hiroshima, Japan)… the Peynet lovers have been on all that could symbolize love !

Brassens wouldn’t have written “The public benches” without my lovers said he.
Charles Aznavour has also dedicated a song to them that was interpreted by Marcel Amont : The paper lovers”

Four museums are presently dedicated to Peynet : Antibes, Brassac les Mines (native town of my grand-mother Isabelle), Karuizawa (Nagano, Japan) and Sakuto-cho (Okayama, Japan)

He died on 14 January 1999 when he was 90 years old. It was exactly a month before “Saint Valentine Day” !

Annie Peynet