Antoine Blanchard (1910-1988) Grand Boulevard Paris (oil on canvas 38x76cm).

Antoine Blanchard is the pseudonym for French artist Marcel Masson  who was born on 15 November 1910 in a small village near the banks of the Loire.

• 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.

In the late 1950s, he painted many immensely popular Parisian street scenes in bygone days, often from vintage postcards. Often they were the same scenes but depicted at different times of the year to reflect the seasonal streetscapes, including busy scenes with pedestrians in a rush to go home, and bright store-fronts reflecting on wet streets.

Antoine Blanchard died in 1988.

Website | About | Facebook | Twitter

“Is It Art?”