Vincent COURDOUAN

Their story.

Art is the only creator of beauty after God, he said. Vincent Courdouan (Joseph, Vincent, François Courdouan) was a French painter born on March 7th 1810 in Toulon and died in Toulon on December 8th 1893. His father, Honoré Courdouan, was a blacksmith and veterinarian. Vincent Courdouan was born in the family house located at 36 rue du Champ de Mars in Toulon and he also died there. Vincent Courdouan is considered as the leader of the Provençal school (Toulon school). He was not only a great marine painter, a landscape painter of the hinterland and the Var coastline, but also an orientalist painter and above all an outstanding draughtsman. He died at the age of 83, leaving a considerable body of work. They are present in many museums: Arles, Draguignan, Flers, Montpellier, Narbonne, Nice, Nîmes, Toulon. The latter contains a masterpiece: The Valley of Anguish, painted in 1887. It is a mountain landscape in chiaroscuro, with rocks lit by the pink light of the setting sun in a completely wild place, of a striking realism. Vincent Courdouan painted many landscapes in various places of Toulon and its surroundings: the roadstead of Toulon, the Cap Brun, the Lower Battery, the cornice of Mourillon, the Fort Saint-Louis..