Gouache By Paguenaud: View Of The Nile, Egypt

A very fine gouache, framed without glass, signed lower right, with the inscription on the back "View of the Nile, Egypt."

There are some dirt in the sky and light scratches.

A traveling painter, Paguenaud trained under the academic painter William Bouguereau, whose classes he attended in Bordeaux before continuing his studies at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1922, he was appointed painter to the French Navy, a title which earned him Paul Valéry's description "Admiral of Painters and Painter of Admirals." The artist expressed a desire to discover the world from a very young age. "I am going to fulfill one of the dearest dreams of my life," wrote Paguenaud as he embarked on his first voyage in 1902. "To go there, far away, to the unknown of the Tropics, whose very name awakens in me something that stirs me in a mad way." From this first voyage, which brought him to Martinique at the time of the eruption of Mount Pelée, he returned with a travel journal. From then on, Jean-Louis Paguenaud never stopped going to sea. Between 1903 and 1912, on the schooner of his friend Casimir Sobanski, the Polish painter, he sailed the Mediterranean and brought back paintings of Beirut, Alexandria, and Cairo. In 1925, on the cruiser Duguay-Trouin, he discovered the African coast and brought back dozens of gouache paintings. In 1927, aboard the cruiser Lamothe-Piquet, he traveled through South America, stopping in Argentina, Brazil, the Cape Verde Islands, French Guiana, and Uruguay.

Gouache on view: 345x500
With the frame: 460x615