Antoine Blanchard (French, 1910-1988) Arc de Triomphe

Antoine Blanchard (French, 1910-1988)
Antoine Blanchard painted his immensely popular Parisian street scenes. He was born in a small village near the banks of the Loire. Blanchard received his initial artistic training at the Beaux-Arts in Rennes, Brittany. He then moved to Paris in 1932 where he joined the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Like Edouard Cortes (1882-1969) and Eugene Galien-Laloue (1854-1941), Antoine Blanchard essentially painted Paris and the Parisians in bygone days, often from vintage postcards. The artist began painting his Paris street scenes in the late 1950s, and like Cortes, often painted the same Paris landmark many times, in different weather conditions or various seasons. The most recurrent topics were views of the capital city in cloudy or rainy days, showing streets busy with pedestrians in a rush to go home, and bright storefronts reflecting on wet streets. Many of the French Quarter art galleries of New Orleans handle Antoine Blanchard paintings and prints since this American City has a strong French history.