Paul Lucien Dessau (1909-1999) - Early 20th Century Oil Country View

Description

This charming landscape scene looks across rolling summer fields. Painted in an impressionist style with a textured surface. Signed to the lower right. Presented in a fluted light wood frame. On board.

Condition

Some scuffing to the frame with some loss of varnish.

Size

29 x 49cm (11.4" x 19.3")
Framed Size: 42.5 x 62cm (16.7" x 24.4")

Artist Biography

Paul Lucien Dessau was a painter who was born in Edmonton, Essex. On leaving school, Dessau was apprenticed to a studio of commercial artists. While there, he illustrated catalogues for Gammages, a then well-known department store located in Holborn, and in the evenings he attended classes at Hornsey College of Art. With his brother writer Bernard Dewsbury Dessau he then set up his own commercial studio in the Strand. For a time during the Depression, the brothers lived a meagre existence while Paul continued to paint in his spare time, attending anatomy classes at the Central School of Arts & Crafts. He furthered his art studies at Hornsey School of Art and at St. Martin's and by the outbreak of World War II, had exhibited a number paintings at the Royal Academy and other galleries in London. His ambition then was to be a portrait painter. But it was not until he and his brother joined the London Auxiliary Fire Service on the outbreak of war that Paul Dessau found the freedom to paint as he had always wished.

It was perhaps also as a result of the war that Dessau's work began to be noticed. In February 1940, the Home Office, aware that a number of artists had joined various branches of Civil Defence, sent out a circular to all members in the greater London area suggesting that –'where circumstances permitted' - these painters should be given the opportunity to contribute to the artistic record of the war. The London Fire Brigade, somewhat mystified to find a number of artists in their ranks, agreed to assist wherever possible the men's reasonable requests. Thus, Paul Dessau became a Fireman Artist and as such was an Official War Artist recording the raging fires which swept through London during the Blitz. Among others who did likewise were, Leonard Rosoman and Norman Hepple, both later to become members of the RA, Bernard Hailstone, and cartoonists Ben Betts and Robert Coram aka 'Maroc'. Dessau was a founder member of the Fireman Artists Committee, and between 1941 and 1944, the Fireman Artists held four large exhibitions at the Royal Academy, shows which then went on tour around the country. Paul Dessau went on to show at the RP, Cooling Galleries, RSA in the provinces and in Chicago Museum of Art, his work being acquired not only by the IWM, but by the headquarters of the London Fire Service at Southwark, Worcester Art Gallery, Museum of London, Royal Air Force Museum and Stoke-on-Trent Art Gallery. Dessau also produced a number of the illustrations for Fire and Water, a National Fire Service anthology published in 1942, which included contributions by Stephen Spender and William Sansom.