Voilà, dit-il, ce qui mérite la médaille » le maître avait tout de suite discerné dans la foule des sculptures l’œuvre qui révélait à la fois un véritable tempérament d’artiste et une sur connaissance du métier Charles Despiau on seeing one of her works at the Paris Salon.
A student of Richard Dufour, Robert Wlérick, Charles Despiau and Maurice Gensoli, she studied at the School of Fine Arts in Rouen where she won a first prize in sculpture and architecture in 1922. She exhibited two busts, “Beethoven” and “Résignation“, at the Salon of French artists in 1927.
She was the first winner of the John-Simon-Guggenheim foundation in New York in 1937. The same year, she created models for the national manufacture of Sèvres. She obtained a gold medal at the 1937 Universal Exhibition as well as a gold medal from the Society of Encouragement for National Industry.
Josette Hebert-Coeffin was a French sculptor, engraver and medalist.
Her vocation was born very early at the age of 5. She first studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Rouen in Normandy and won, at sixteen years old, a first prize for sculpture and architecture, she then studied in Paris under Wlerick and Despiau. The artist obtained a Gold Medal at the 1937 ‘Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques’ and in the same year a scholarship from the Guggenheim Foundation in New York.
Coeffin was the first female medalist to be chosen to engrave a Presidential medal that of Réné Roty. Many of her medals were issued as Éditions particulières. She specialized in animal studies – particularly animal busts and figures and groups of birds.