Paul Alexandre Hannaux was a French painter, illustrator and decorator born on 15 September 1897 at 3 rue des Beaux-Arts in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. He was the son of the sculptor Emmanuel Hannaux (1855–1934), and although he spent most of his life in Paris he retained strong ties to Lorraine, particularly Metz. He served in the First World War from 1915 to 1919 and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Hannaux entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1920, joining the studio of Ernest Laurent.
His academic career followed a classical trajectory: he won the Prix de Rome in 1924 and in 1929 became the first City of Paris scholarship holder at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid. Despite this conventional training, he admired expressionist painters, especially Oskar Kokoschka, and his mature work reflects a tension between classical measure and a more personal, expressive sensibility. He joined the Association La Fresque in 1933. A prolific traveller, Hannaux painted extensively abroad, producing landscapes and scenes of North Africa, Venice, Provence, Brazil, Spain, Austria, Normandy and Paris.
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