About Josee Nadeau
Bio
Born in Montréal Canada in 1963, Josée Nadeau grew up both in Montréal and Ottawa, Canada. At the age of 7, she had her first private lesson of art. At the age 13, she needed her parents’ permission to draw nude models at the Ottawa school of art, where she drew alongside pupils twice her age. Nadeau attended the Emma Lake workshop after graduating in Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montréal in 1985. It was there that she painted with some of the most prominent Canadian artists, such as Dorothy Knowles, David Alexander, Bill Pereudoff. Nadeau later traveled to Europe, where she worked equally in Spain, where both Picasso and Dali also worked (studied or trained) at the Bellas Artes Institute of Art in Madrid.
In 1998 Nadeau met and became prodigy of European Art Expert Gerald Van der Kemp and his wife Art Advocate Florence. Known for being the Founder and President, Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, Foreign Correspondent Member of the Institut de France, Academie des Beaux-Arts, (Mr. Van der Kemp was responsible for having saved the Mona Lisa during WWll and masterminded the restoration of Chateau de Versailles, the palace of the Sun King of France, Louis XlV for a period of 27yrs (1953-1980). Van der Kemp who was curator of Claude Monet’s garden at the time provided Nadeau with his personal use of his studio, and the VIP suite where Nadeau would reside during her stay as their personal guest on the grounds of Claude Monet garden in Giverny France.
Van der Kemp took a liking to Nadeau’s work and passion for it wishing he could have pursued his art commercially like she did something he could not fully do once he became curator of Versailles thinking it was unethical to do so. Nadeau, Always the guest at the head table along with dignitaries and Royalty. Nadeau became their personal guest artist in residence. Gerald Van der Kemp was known as the last Napoleon of our time. After many years of neglect by a nation ambiguous in its attitude toward symbols of royalty, Mr. Van der Kemp devoted himself to returning the principal galleries of Versailles, apartments and grand salons to the way they were in the 17th and 18th centuries.With the encouragement of President Charles de Gaulle and his culture Minister, the writer André Malraux, Mr. Van der Kemp scoured the world for treasures sold after the French Revolution and assembled an army of master craftsmen — carvers, plasterers, gilders, silversmiths, seamstresses — to repair or recreate the palace’s lost splendors.
Van der Kemp was a painter himself. In 1976, he was given the post of curator of Claude Monet’s garden where he restored and revamp the property making it to be one of the most visited garden in the World. She was also the link between the people from the small town of Giverny and the founder of the Versailles Foundation, Florence Van der Kemp.