Born in 1972 and trained at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Bertrand de Miollis first became known for his travel sketchbooks — created alongside writer Sylvain Tesson and war correspondent Arnaud de la Grange. That practice shaped a method he still follows today: go, observe, understand — then paint.
He worked as an embedded artist with French and British troops in Iraq (2003) and Afghanistan (2010), then spent a year in residence at the Paris Opera with its dance company (2014). His immersions — from Lake Baikal to the United States, Chile, and Rwanda — return again and again to the same question: the bonds between people, and between people and their surroundings. A member of the Fondation Taylor (2015) and named Official Painter of the French Navy in 2018 — a rare honor awarded to artists whose work captures France’s maritime and coastal spirit — he now divides his work between oil painting and wood/linocut engraving.
DISTINCTIONS
- Named Official Painter of the French Navy by ministerial appointment (2018)
- Member of the Fondation Taylor (2017)
- Eddy Rugale Maichailov Prize (2013)
- 1st Prize, Fondation Noufflard – Fondation de France (2012)
- First Prize for Works on Paper, Peintres aux Armées (2011)
EXHIBITIONS
- Official Navy Painters, group museum exhibition, Versailles, 6 months, 2026
- Photoclimat, group exhibition, Place de la Concorde, Paris, Sept–Oct 2025
- “Rivages,” two-artist show, Galerie Winston, Dinard, summer 2025
- “Chromatica,” solo exhibition, Maison André Derain, Chambourcy, May 2025
- “Salon Comparaison,” group exhibition with Michèle Battut’s group, 2025
- “Air Panorama,” solo exhibition, Galerie Artismagna, May 2024
- “Oxygène Reset,” solo exhibition, Galerie Artismagna, 2022
- Permanent collection (35 works), La Mamounia Palace, Marrakech
BOOKS / PUBLICATIONS
- Récits d’aventuriers — Éditions de l’Aube (2025)
- Deux petits pas sur le sable mouillé, with Anne-Dauphine Julliand — Les Arènes (2018)
- 100 choses à faire à Paris — Éditions Le Figaro (2013)
- Sibérie ma chérie, with Sylvain Tesson and Thomas Goisque — Gallimard (2012)
- Haute Tension, with Sylvain Tesson and Thomas Goisque (2010)
- Aphorismes sous la lune, by Sylvain Tesson — Équateurs (2010)
- 150 jours à contre-courant, with Maud Fontenoy — Éditions du Chêne (2007)
- Irak Année Zéro — Gallimard (2004)
Bertrand de Miollis carries the eye of a traveler who never returns home empty-handed. Hundreds of remembered images settle into each canvas, and it’s there — in that quiet accumulation of wonder — that his particular gift lies: a childlike sensitivity to the marvelous, still intact. Under his brush, the world seems to sing again. This is, rarely enough, a cartography of joy rendered in color and form.
— Hélène Legrand, painter and art historian
