La Forêt Bay In Concarneau - Paul Eschbach - Brittany

Oil on canvas, signed lower right.
Gold medal, hors concours, Salon des Artistes Français.

Dimensions:
Unframed: Width 73 cm, Height 50 cm;
Framed: Width 60 cm, Height 83.5 cm.

Paul Eschbach (1881-1961):
Paul Eschbach was born in Paris. He was the son of an Alsatian officer who became a painter, which seems to have influenced his early interest in drawing and painting. He was orphaned at a young age and placed in an institution in northern France, where the sister of the landscape painter Gabriel Hubert recognized his talent and encouraged him to practice lithography from the age of 13. At 16, he joined the École des Beaux-Arts in Lille, guided by Pharaon de Winter towards anecdotal painting, then in 1900 he entered Jean-Paul Laurens' studio at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and also attended classes at the Académie Julian, where he would later become a professor. In the first twenty years of his career, he made a name for himself with portraits and genre scenes, but during a trip to Italy, drawn to plein air painting, he began to compose seascapes; this was in 1920. Shortly after, he discovered Brittany and the port life of Concarneau. He enjoyed it so much that he became President of the Concarneau Artistic Union, along with, among others, Henri Barnoin and Eugène Labitte. An excellent colorist, he knew how to paint Brittany with the rigorous personality of a marine painter. He taught at the Julian Academy from 1912 to 1938. Gold medalist in 1920. This painter is represented in numerous museums.