Paul Cornoyer (American, 1864 to 1923)
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Paul Cornoyer attended the city’s school of fine arts before traveling to Paris in 1889 to study with Jules Lefebvre, Benjamin Constant, and Louis Blanc. Upon returning to St. Louis in 1894, he established himself as a painter of urban subjects. Eventually his work attracted the attention of William Merritt Chase, who advised Cornoyer to visit New York. In New York Cornoyer continued to specialize in cityscapes, as was noted in the local papers: “Paul Cornoyer has been very busy all Winter painting snow scenes, most of which have been sold to New York and out-of-town collectors. His view in Madison Square, The Rainy Day, which was exhibited at the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington and later at the Powell Gallery in New York, was recently purchased by Dr. Higgins of this city’…Just now Mr. Cornoyer is at work on several new scenes of Madison and Washington Squares.”[1]
Along with fellow artists Childe Hassam and Colin Campbell Cooper, Cornoyer favored Madison Square as a subject, especially seen from Fifth Avenue, where the adjacent park could be juxtaposed with nearby buildings.[2] If by 1907 paintings of urban life in New York City were no longer a novelty, that may have been due in part to Cornoyer’s presence. He had been painting cityscapes there since 1899, and had, according to William H. Gerdts, “contributed significantly to this relatively new genre.”
JNW
[1] Gossip of the Studios, The New York Times, April 7, 1907.
[2] William H. Gerdts, et al, East Coast/West Coast and beyond: Colin Campbell Cooper, America Impressionist (Hudson Hills, 2006), 34.
[3] Gerdts, 38.
Information courtesy of Shannon’s Fine Art Auctioneers, April 2012.