Edouard Cortes Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

Edouard Leon Cortès was born in Lagny-Sur-Marne, a small town near Paris. His father, Antonio Cortès, had been a painter for the Spanish Royal Court.

Edouard Cortes began his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of 17. He gained immediate recognition at age nineteen with his first exhibition.

Although Edouard Leon Cortes was a pacifist when war approached his local town he enrolled in a French Infantry Regiment at the age of 32. Cortès was wounded by a bayonet during a battle, he survived and was taken to a military hospital, and awarded the Croix de Guerre. He was later assigned in a different capacity to use his artistic talent to sketch enemy positions.

His wife had died in 1918 and he soon married his sister-in-law Lucienne Joyeuse. Cortès lived a simple life amid a close circle of friends.

His works were first exhibited in North America in 1945 and he achieved even greater success. The paintings are regular Parisian street scenes that have been transformed by the shop lights and twilight glow of the late afternoon into beautiful colorful streets.

In his last year of life, he was awarded the prestigious Prix Antoine-Quinson from the Salon de Vincennes. Later in life, his convictions led him to refuse the Légion d'Honneur from the French Government.

On November 30, 2000, four paintings by Edouard Leon Cortès were recovered in Kalispell, Montana, following an eight-month investigation conducted by the FBI. The recovered paintings were stolen twelve years earlier from a gallery in Carmel, California.

In 2008, a lost Edouard Cortès painting of a Paris street scene called Marche aux Fleurs (Flower Market) was discovered among donated items at a Goodwill Industries thrift store in Maryland., after the store manager noticed that it was a signed painting, the painting was later auctioned for $41,000.00.

Art Movement: Post-Impressionism.
He Traveled To USA.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.