Two years later he wrote to Louis Metman, the curator of the Museum of Decorative Arts, who took him under his wing and enrolled him in the Académie Ranson.

In 1922, he entered the National School of Art in Paris (headed by Ernest Laurent), but he clashed with his professors and the school's atmosphere: agitated, noisy, in an ivory tower, giving itself airs of having the bit between the teeth, of being the safekeeper of authority, but actually destroying only art that nobody, in this majestic enclosure, thinks of defending, always making storms in a teacup or shouting "Fire!

When he left school "by the Bonaparte route" (that is, by failing), he signed a contract with an art dealer named Chéron who counted among his protéges Chaïm Soutine, Tsuguharu Foujita and Kees van Dongen.

From that moment on, as soon as he could escape from his restoration workshop, he ran to take refuge in Les Bonhommes in the forests of L'Isle-Adam, Val-d'Oise, where he painted subjects as easy to conceive as they are hard to make: pond life, tricks of the light, the wind on leaves and sky, the changing seasons, etc.

He remained distant from 20th century movements laying claim as the heirs of the impressionists, be it Paul Cézanne or Vincent van Gogh, and his art was deep and authentically attached to the French painters of the 19th century who had been able to get through the midst of official red tape and reconcile pictorial art with truth, freshness, and nature.

In enlisting the great historical or mythological works, Gard goaded the Impressionists: "the folly to think something can be achieved without thought, just by representing light and colour".

Until 1926, when Fauvism, Cubism and Abstract styles came to the fore, Gard stayed away from theory and, it seems, followed Corot's lessons when he installed his easel on street corners in Morigny or Étampes and practiced with a palette of soft and refined tones.

From 1927, putting to use his stays in Toulon studying light and the harmonies of tone, he expressed himself in still life pictures of vigorous forms basked in a vibrant and colourful atmosphere, or in nudes with glowing flesh.

From 1932 Gard was definitively established in Paris, and although he had never seen Mediterranean light, he continued to explore this field in his still lives, his paintings of flowers and his portraits.

In the Jeune homme au manteau ("Young Man With Coat"), he pays homage to Titian, reaffirming, in the midst of the non-figurative art movement, his ties with the Enlightenement and Impressionist painters.

He confessed this was not his gift, so he soon gave it up and started the practice of introducing his exhibition catalogue with a lecture on painting, often a satire against certain movements, the Salons or the art critics.

In 1943 and 1944, he wrote five articles for the weekly magazine Panorama: "On Still-Life", "Forms and the plurality of exactness in painting", "Gauguin's Heritage", "Backbones won't swallow", "'Gérôme', or 'the blunder of an era'".

He set forth his position toward non-figurative art, explored its origins (which he considered fallacious), and highlighted the lack of understandable criteria by which to judge which works are valuable which are not.