In memory of Jacques Charmoz, this website is a celebration of the accomplishments of his life as an artist, adventurer and father.

Jacques Jacques

Jacques Henri Gui Charmot, dit Charmoz, was neither a famous statesman, nor a hearththrob actor, nor a legendary athlete. He was, however, a musketeer, an adventurer, a pioneer, a charmer, and a creative and versatile artist. He was a man of his time, who lived on the leading edge of progress and discovery.

Jacques was Born into a bourgeois Parisian family in 1911. His ancestry can be traced back to Claude Charmot, born in the town of Chablais in Savoy in 1460, a region eventually annexed by France from Italy in 1860, but whose land was coveted over centuries of wars by what is now the French, the Austrian, the Spaniards and the Italian under various empires and coalitions. Many genealogical records dating prior to the 15th century would traced to Turin, Italy, which might in part explain why he developed such a deep attraction to skiing and mountaineering, while most Charmot men tended to become jurists or notaries.

Not much is known of his upbringing during WWI, but in 1920 he was sent to boarding school at the Jesuit College of Mongre, outside of Lyon, where his uncle Francois was the headmaster. Later, his sons Jacques and Remy would also attend this school where Saint Exupery and Teilhard de Chardin had been students as well.

It was in this boarding school where Jacques began drawing; he kept sketch books close at hand to draw and sketch at will. The drawings, artistries, and paintings were interwoven with all aspects of his adventures, as we will witness through his life as a skier, a mountaineer, a fighter pilot, a commercial pilot, a father, and in his late years, a dedicated painter.