Beloosesky Gallery is interested in purchasing original paintings by Antoine Blanchard.
Please call (917) 749-4557 or email us at info@beloosesky.com.
Antoine Blanchard is the pseudonym under which French painter, Marcel Masson (1910–1988) painted his immensely popular Parisian street scenes. He was born in a small village near the banks of the Loire on November 15th, 1910.
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. He won the Prix de Rome earning him the opportunity to travel and live in Italy.
Like Édouard Cortès (1882–1969) and Eugène 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 Cortès, often painted many times the same Paris landmark, 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.
His style is characterized by small brushstrokes and bright colors, lending his canvases a shimmering tone. Among his subjects are notable historic sites such as the Arc de Triomphe, the Moulin Rouge, and the Notre Dame, which he would often repaint under different conditions—such as depicting the customers of the Café de la Paix strolling under sunny skies in one canvas, and scurrying to find shelter from a rain storm in another
Antoine Blanchard died in 1988.