Millions of people email me photos of paintings of nostalgic Paris street scenes. Most of them are straight from the Rive Gauche art seller’s street stalls, painted by unknown semi-proficient artists for the tourist market. These Paris scene painters have existed for 100 years or more, from a tradition started by collectors by the noble sons of the European and American hoi polloi on the son’s 19th century “Grand Tours.”
These “Grand Tours” offered two purposes:
- The young men bought art and therefore became budding connoisseurs.
- The young men sowed foreign wild oats.
Early museum collections are full of this “Grand Tour” collecting, much of which has been de-accessioned.
However, some very talented young men with very clever and good “eyes” culled “Grand Tour” art:
- The acquisition of part of the Grecian Parthenon
- Fragments of the Acropolis of Athens by Thomas Bruce
- The 7th Earl of Elgin from 1801-12
Another good example of high-end Parisian art is the street scenes of the City of Lights painted by Edouard Cortes (1882-1969). When WN sent me a picture of two Paris street scenes I yawned. But wait! Some Parisian street scene paintings DO have value. I offer you this story of two paintings of the valuable kind.
WN’s paintings, it seems, languished on “Etsy” at $200-300 each when a kind soul emailed WN and told her “these are too cheap.” They’re painted by Paul Reynard or “Renard” as he sometimes signed. WN pulled them and called me.
Mr. Reynard was a French born painter who, for three decades, taught art at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, from 1981-2002. Reynard was also a glass artist, like his compatriot Marc Chagall, who also created stained glass for notable French cathedrals.
Mr. Reynard also worked as a muralist, for swanky addresses on Park Avenue (NYC) and at Harvard University. He developed an interesting relationship with the Armenian esoteric mystic G. I. Gurdjieff, who created of the School of the Fourth Way. Gurdjieff expressed “The Work” in his book Life is Real Only Then, When I Am. He became known for the Fourth Way Ennegram, triangles within a circle which he believed represented completeness. Gurdjieff’s master work revealed the discovery of “self remembering,” paying attention to both your outside experiences and inward feelings, pushing away negativity. So much for the artist and the mystic.
But the artist Reynard felt so taken with Gurdjieff’s “Work” that Reynard rose to the high rank of co-president of the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York and held this magnificent office when Reynard died in 2005. Apocrypha has it that Reynard studied personally with the great Gurdjieff at Gurdjieff’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Paris. Today, almost every major city has a branch of the Gurdjieff Foundation, believe it or not, so do we, here in Santa Barbara! Artists and mystics go together.
Colorful as a man, and sometimes valuable as a painter, Paul Reynard’s canvases in the collection of WN are worth $1,900 each.