Edouard Cortes artwork • watercolour • drawing • for sale Skaters on the Seine, Paris

Edouard Cortès, son of the Spanish court painter Antonio Cortès, would become known as ‘Le Poète Parisien de la Peinture’. His father had settled in nearby Lagny-sur-Marne after a visit to the 1855 World Exhibition in Paris. His talented eldest son, Édouard, received lessons from him at a young age and began his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of 17. Along with other artists such as Eugène Galien-Laloue and Luigi Loir, he began painting around the turn of the century in the French Post-Impressionist style the scenes for which he would become so famous: the streets and monuments of the ‘City of Light’, Paris, highly sought after by collectors and tourists. Once Cortès had found his niche, he remained faithful to it. He would capture the city in all its seasons for more than 60 years, until his death in 1969. In the mid-1920s, he moved to Lagny in Normandy, where, alongside his cityscapes, he also painted the countryside, interiors, and still lifes.