Paul Peel so Great an Artist in so Few Years of Life

Canadian painter Paul Peel (Born November 7th 1860 in London/Ontario – Died October 3rd 1892 in Paris/France) was the son of a marble-cutter and drawing teacher (John Robert Peel). He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy, Philidelphia (1877-1880 under Thomas Eakins); the R.A. Schools, London ,under William Lees Judson,(1880); and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris (1881) under Gerome and others.

He returned to London, Ontario, and Toronto for a short time about 1890, but was chiefly active in Paris. He travelled widely in Canada and in Europe, exhibiting as a member of the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy. He later returned to Paris where he died in October 1892. Before his death he had achieved a considerable success for his technique in such academic subjects as 'After the Bath' (1890).

His sentimental studies of children, such as The Modest Model (1889) and After the Bath (1890), followed the carefully modelled prescription of the Académie. After the Bath won Peel a medal at the 1890 Salon and displays his skill using light and colour.

He was one of the first Canadian painters to portray nude figures, as in his A Venetian Bather (1889). At the time of his death Peel appeared to be changing his style toward Impressionism. However, he did not live to develop his art beyond its academic sentimentalism. His lung infection was likely induced by overwork and exhaustion. A major retrospective of his work was held in London, Ontario in 1987.

He had two children, a son and then a daughter, who were his models in some of his art.

Many of his works now hang in the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Source: This page was extracted from Art History Archived. com. Please click here.

Note: name, William Lee Judson from the research of Mo Bayliss.


Addend: Answers.Com adds this information to his life story

(b London, Ont., 7 Nov 1860; d Paris, 3 Oct 1892). Canadian painter, active also in France. He was born of English parents who had settled in Canada in the early 1850s, and his early artistic ambitions were encouraged by his father, a stone-carver and drawing instructor. From 1877 to 1880 he studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, learning particularly from the progressive Thomas Eakins. He was elected a member of the Ontario Society of Artists in 1880, and later that year he left for Europe, possibly stopping in London on his way to France. He spent the first part of 1881 in Pont-Aven in Brittany, where he produced the religious work Devotion (1881; Ottawa, N.G.).

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