Sailing Tuna Boats - Paul Eschbach - Brittany

Dimensions:
unframed 38 x 45 cm;
framed 52 x 60 cm.

Oilon canvas, signed lower left.

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 landscape painter Gabriel Hubert recognized his talent and encouraged him to take up lithography at the age of 13. At 16, he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lille, where Pharaon de Winter guided him toward anecdotal painting; then, in 1900, he joined Jean-Paul Laurens’s studio at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and also took classes at the Académie Julian, where he would later become a professor.

During 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 creating seascapes in 1920. Shortly thereafter, he discovered Brittany and port life in Concarneau. He enjoyed it so much that he became president of the Union Artistique de Concarneau, alongside Henri Barnoin and Eugène Labitte, among others. An excellent colorist, he knew how to paint Brittany with the meticulous precision of a marine painter. He taught at the Académie Julian from 1912 to 1938 and was awarded a gold medal in 1920. This painter’s works are featured in numerous museums.