Bruce Chessé had been surrounded and influenced by art all his life. His father was Ralph Chessé, a self-taught painter, sculptor, puppeteer and actor from New Orleans.
“He was the most profound influence on my life,” Bruce said in a 2021 video. “At the same time, he was the most difficult guy to get along with because he was focused on art. And yet as a child, I was completely obsessed with his artwork.”

The elder Chessé was born in the French Quarter in 1900. According to Chessé Arts, Ralph was punished in Catholic school for being left-handed, and was forced him to use his right hand. He did not paint with his left hand until 1982.
A Creole descendant of an enslaved woman, Ralph was in denial about his Black heritage, according to Bruce.
“This had a major influence on my father and instilled in him a fear … that he could not survive as a person of color,” Bruce said. “Even though my father was in denial, his Black heritage always came out in his art.”
Chessé Arts states that Ralph exhibited his first paintings, featuring Black people in scenes from his childhood, in New Orleans in 1920. He also painted dock workers and scenes from the Bible.
Introduced to puppetry in 1926, Ralph moved to San Francisco in 1928 and opened several puppet theaters. In 1952, he created “The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz,” an award-winning children’s TV program on air for 17 years.
Ralph returned to painting Black images after cruising in the Caribbean in 1981.
“This was something he could not get away from,” Bruce said. “He painted those things that he loved and cared about and had full meaning to him.”
Ralph died from heart failure in an Oregon nursing home in 1991.
For more tales from New Orleans history, visit the Back in the Day archives.