Jacques Henri Gui Charmot, dit Charmoz, was neither a famous statesman, nor an 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, who was 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 Austrians, the Spaniards and the Italians under various empires and coalitions. Many genealogical records, dating prior to the 15th century, would be traced to Turin, Italy, which might, in part, explain why he developed such a deep attraction to skiing and mountaineering, while most of the 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 Mongré, outside of Lyon, where his uncle François was the headmaster. Later, his sons Jacques and Remy would also attend this school, where Saint Exupéry 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 throughout his life as a skier, a mountaineer, a fighter pilot, a commercial pilot, a father, and in his late years, a dedicated painter.