P. (PAUL) MATHIEU

Biography

P. (PAUL) MATHIEU
1872 Sint-Joost-ten-Node (Belgium) - 1932 Brussel (Belgium)

Paul Mathieu is best known for his luminist and post-impressionist landscapes, cityscapes, harbor views, interiors and still lifes. From the age of 12, he attended the École Normale d'Art in Brussels. There he learned drawing and the craft of woodworking. Because he worked mostly en-plein-air, you see few characters in his artworks; he worked mostly in the Kempen region and on the Belgian coast. He was admitted to the Brussels Salon in 1893 and was featured at the World's Fair in Antwerp. He became a teacher of "line drawing" at the Academy of Brussels from 1896 until his death in 1932. Together with the painter Alfred Bastien, he worked on the "Panorama of Belgian Congo," intended for the 1913 Ghent World's Fair. This panorama became a gigantic canvas: fifteen meters high and with a perimeter of 150 meters. Mathieu painted the landscapes and Bastien painted the folk scenes and the portrayal of human types. This gigantic work became a grandiose success with 480,000 visitors. During World War I in he remained in Paris where, as a Flemish colorist, he depicted Parisian cityscapes in his own unique way. Most of his works are in private hands, but there are also works in museums in Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels and Kortrijk.