Èdouard Leon Cortès

Édouard Léon Cortès was born in Lagny, France, on August 6, 1882, into a family of artists. His father, Antonio Cortès, a Spanish court painter from Seville, settled in France after visiting the 1855 Exposition Universelle. Antonio opened a studio in Lagny, where he became known for his pastoral and animal scenes.

Édouard showed early artistic talent and, by age 13, was already listed as an “artist-painter.” He trained in his father’s studio and was influenced by the Barbizon painters and local masters such as Pissarro and Lebasque. At 16, he exhibited his first work, La Labour, at the Société des Artistes Français, earning critical acclaim.

In 1914, Cortès married Fernande Joyeuse and had a daughter, Jacqueline. Despite being a pacifist, he served in World War I, was wounded, and received the Croix de Guerre. After Fernande’s death in 1918, he married her sister Lucienne Joyeuse and continued to paint Parisian scenes.

By the 1920s, Cortès had moved back to Lagny, painting both Paris and the French countryside. He became president of the Union des Beaux-Arts de Lagny and exhibited widely in major Paris salons.

Cortès mastered oils, gouache, watercolor, and pastel, best known for his luminous depictions of Paris streets. He intentionally portrayed the city as it appeared before 1939, saying he wished “to stop history before the Second World War.”

His works gained international fame, especially in the United States and Canada, and are now held in museums across France, Belgium, England, Switzerland, Sweden, and Canada.