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Lovers of Paris, the Post-Impressionist artist Edouard Leon Cortes deserved the title "Poet Parisien de la Peinture "given by his contemporaries in reference to his admirable Parisian landscape in brightness or rainy twilight.
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Born at Lagny, a suburb east of Paris, August 8 1882, the artist was of English descent, his father, Antonio Cortes, was a painter for the Royal Court of Spain.
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From age 17 until age of 22, Edouard Leon Cortes was pupil of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His first exhibition at the Salon of 1901 where he presented his first "streets of Paris by night" brought him success and immediate recognition. Subsequently, the artist became member of the Society of French Artists, he presented his paintings every year.
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In 1915, he received a silver medal at the Salon of French Artists and a gold medal at the Salon des Independants. In his paintings Cortes sought the effects of time of day or night, the effects of weather, seasons: morning, evening, rain, snow ... Like Paul Gustav Fischer in Denmark and the streets of Copenhagen, and Claude Monet and the Impressionists whose subjects under time and different hours braved snow and fog, Cortes stressed his independence. Not without humor, he once replied to a reporter who asked him if he was a pupil of Luigi Loir (many paintings Parisian painter): "No, I'm only a student myself!"
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In 1914 Cortes married Fernande Joyeuse, their daughter was born in 1916. Cortes was a pacifist, like many others forced to enlist in the French Infantry Regiment at the age of 32 years and had to go to the Front of the Great War. Contact agent, Cortes was wounded by a bayonet and then evacuated to a military hospital where he received the Croix de Guerre. But he was reassigned to use his artistic talent to make sketches of enemy positions. Once demobilized, his pacifist beliefs led him to refuse the Legion d'Honneur from the French Government's wife died in 1918, Cortes married his sister-Lucienne Joyeuse.
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The success of the artist grew after 1945, when his works were exhibited in North America. The last year of his life, the prestigious Anthony Show's Quinson Vincennesns he was awarded. Cortes was a very humble man and lived a simple life among a circle of close friends. The artist died November 28, 1969, at Lagny where a street bears his name.
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