Paul Emile LECOMTE
Paris 1877 - Paris (?) 1950
Biography
The son of the landscape painter and watercolourist Paul Lecomte (1842-1920), Paul Emile Lecomte was initially trained by his father before completing his artistic education in the studio of Fernand Cormon at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. To this formal training was added the influence of the Impressionists, particularly evident in terms of his painterly technique. Lecomte made his debut at the Salon des Artistes Français in 1902 with a painting of Mont-Saint-Michel seen from Avranches, and he continued to exhibit there in later years, winning a silver medal in 1920 and a gold medal in 1922. Lecomte was a prolific painter, and much of his oeuvre was made up of river and coastal landscapes, port and harbour scenes and market subjects, in both France and Spain. He also produced several views of Venice. In 1928 a book of Lecomte’s watercolour views of Paris was published in three volumes, while two years later an exhibition of his sketchbook drawings and watercolours was held at the Galerie Charpentier in Paris.