8. FAMILY IN FRANCE
If the desire to perfect his art had led Yan to leave China in 1938, the meeting and then marriage to Louise Lenoir in 1953 would change the course of his life. He chose to settle in France and start a family there.
Louise Lenoir
Louise and Marianne Yen
In a park in Paris
Family picnic, very popular in the 1950s in France
Resistance Deportee Identification Card of Louise Lenoir
For her courage during the Second World War, Louise Yen-Lenoir was awarded the rank of second lieutenant in the French Army as a member of the FFC (French Fighting Forces), and she was named a Knight of the Légion d’Honneur on October 30, 1979. The official ceremony took place in the Cour d’Honneur at Les Invalides on March 12, 1980
The medals awarded to Louise Lenoir by France, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Two things brought Louise and Yan together – their love of art and their commitment against oppression. After graduating from high school, Louise studied drawing and painting, but the sudden death of her father in 1933 forced her to give up an artistic career. Her mother tried to earn a living by doing sewing work and the two older sisters, Louise, 20, and Simone, 14, had to work to help her raise their two younger sisters aged 9 and 8.
Louise first worked as a secretary, one of the few professions open to women at the time. Then, thanks to her precision and talent as a draughtswoman, she was recruited by the army’s geographical service to produce military topographic maps.
From 1942 onwards, she was actively involved in the Resistance, initially drawing forged official stamps for falsified administrative documents. After the Resistance movement to which she belonged was dismantled, she distributed underground Gaullist newspapers and became part of Défense de la France, where she worked in the false identity papers section. After joining the Comet Escape Line, where she took part in escorting Allied airmen parachuted into occupied territory, she was arrested by the Gestapo on 1 March 1944 after being denounced. Imprisoned at Fresnes Prison, she was subsequently deported to Germany at the end of April. After more than a year in concentration camps — first at Ravensbrück, north of Berlin, then at Holleischen in Czechoslovakia — she was liberated on 19 May 1945.
After her return from deportation, she spent a few weeks in Switzerland to recover from the mistreatment and then received a scholarship to study dentistry. After graduating, she worked for several years in Paris and the surrounding region before taking over a dental practice in a town south of Paris in 1957.
Yan built a puppet theater for his daughter, 1959
Bottling of Burgundy wine
Winter holidays in Chamonix, France
Summer holidays in Monte-Carlo, Monaco
The family’s departure from the Parisian artistic scene cut Yan off from that environment and compelled him to abandon a purely artistic career in favor of administrative and accounting work.
