Léon Petua - The Man With The Pipe

Léon PETUA Besançon, 1846 – Zürich, 1921 Oil on canvas 45 x 32 cm (58 x 44 cm with the frame) Signed lower left “L. Pétua” Beautiful carved and gilded wooden frame from the 19th century Léon Pétua is a French painter -comtois of origin who first studied in Besançon and worked in this city with the Lumière photographers. But following the advice of his compatriot Jean-Léon Gérôme, he chose to continue in painting rather than photography and went to Paris in the early 1870s to join the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Gérôme's studio. Very gifted for drawing, Léon Pétua received a higher diploma from the City of Paris for the teaching of drawing in 1872. At the School of Fine Arts, then a pupil of Gérôme, he received a second medal for his figure drawn by after the antique in 1874. In 1875 he was appointed professor at the Technikum in Zürich. He will continue his career between France and Switzerland (Printemps at the museum of Bern; Eva, Psyché at the museum of Besançon; Réveil, La Source at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bucharest). His great qualities of chiaroscuro rendering recall his first career in photography when he worked with the Lumières and then handled wet collodion rather than pencil or brush. His daughter Jeanne Pétua was a pupil of her father and will also become a painter and member of the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris.++++++++