Margaret French

Margaret French (nee Hoening, 1906–1998) was an American artist, best known for her photographs as part of the photo collective PaJaMa.

Education

After attending Smith College, she settled in New York, where she attended a formal artistic education at the Art Students League. There she met Paul Cadmus and Jared French. and also produced etchings, although her best known works were made as part of a collective, personal and professional, with Jared French and Paul Cadmus.

In 1937 she married Jared French, who had a sexual relationship with Paul Cadmus. Despite the marriage, Jared continued his relationship with Cadmus. Together the trio formed the photo collective PaJaMa, (Paul Jared Margaret).

Some of the people photographed were photographer George Platt Lynes, Christopher Isherwood, George Tooker, Cadmus' sister and artist Fidelma, artist Bernard Perlin and Monroe Wheeler, then director of the exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art. but her paintings show clear influences from French and Cadmus, especially the time-consuming paintings in egg tempera, which were a technique that Cadmus and Jared French also used. When Cadmus began a relationship with the young artist George Tooker in 1944, the trio became a quartet, and Tooker is featured in many of PaJaMa's photographs, such as Margaret French, George Tooker and Jared French, Nantucket, and George Tooker at 5 St. Luke’s Place with Paul Cadmus and Jared French in Mirror.

Margaret French died 1998 in New York, at the age of 92. the Museum of Modern Art, the Munson Williams Proctor Art Museum among others.