André Jacquemin was 29 when he met the woman who was going to be his wife. Andrée Poncelet was also an artist. She studied at the Ecole des Arts décoratifs (college of art and design) and her brother was Painter Maurice- Georges Poncelet. They married in 1934 and got three children : François, Anne and Jean-Marie. Even though she was a mother and a wife, Andrée continued her painting career. She never lost her amazing creative force. She contracted her surname and mixed it with her husband's to sign her artwork with pseudonym Andrée Jaclet. She has a wonderful sense of colours. It is her trademark and it appears in her paintings of dazzling bouquets and luminous landscapes. In the late sixties, Andrée Jaclet broke out of her shell and embraced abstract art. Either soft, round, abrupt or sharp, her structured compositions all have powerful colour combinations.

During the war, Jacquemin and his family set up in Vaudeville, not far from Epinal, in a 17 th century manor house. He acted as a nurse practitioner in the rural areas and farmers used to pay him in kind. And in his spare time, he used to ride his bike to go and work on his drawings. During that period, he finished the illustration of "The Inspired hill" published in 1942. At the end of the war, during the liberation period, the situation became very dangerous. The Jacquemins were hiding in the manor when a shrapnel exploded against one of the windows. They really feared for their life...

A summer day, in 1946, André and his wife were visiting the Velay region on the border of Auvergne and Languedoc and fell in love with a 16th century fortified manor house overlooking a small village. The place was in very bad condition and it definitely needed an artist couple's sensitivity, patience and love to be restored. They lived in the house every year from spring to autumn. The volcanic landscapes were a great source of inspiration to both the engraver and the painter.