Paul Lecomte

1842 – Paris – 1920

 

 

French landscape and watercolour painter Paul Lecomte was a student of Emile Lambinet and stood in the tradition of the Barbizon school, which came up around 1830 in the woods of Fontainebleau, south of Paris. This new form of “plein air” painting rejected the academic principles and found its subjects through a direct grasp of nature. The Barbizon artists captured the beauty of their local landscape without idealising it. The choice of themes as well as the depiction of atmosphere and light made them pioneers of both Impressionism and Realism.

Apart from cityscapes of Paris, Paul Lecomte primarily painted rural landscapes that he found in Normandy and Brittany, but also in the Basque region and in the south of France. In his works, as can be seen in this painting in particular, he focused on ponds and lakes time and again. Paul Lecomte depicts the water surrounded by trees in dark greens and earthy browns to create a unique atmosphere that is perfectly complemented by the background in terms of colours and composition. Not only a white house comes into view, but also a small building with a red roof can be seen, in front of which a group of laundresses seems to be working.

From 1868 onwards, Paul Lecomte participated in the Paris Salon on a regular basis for the following 40 years. He received several awards, for example at the World Fairin Paris. His works can be found, among others, in the collections of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse as well as the Louvre and the Petit Palaisin Paris.