Rating and value of paintings by Édouard Cortès

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Artist's rating and value

Thanks to their serene, luminous atmosphere, Édouard Cortes's works are popular with collectors.

On the market, his various realistic compositions are successful at auction. His works sell for between €50 and €100,800, a significant delta but one that speaks volumes about the value that can be attributed to these canvases.

Some of the artist's works, for example, have reached unprecedented sums, as witness his painting Paris Evening,dating from 1905, which sold for €100,800 while it was estimated at between €70,000 and €90,000.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

The artist's works and style

In Édouard Cortès's canvases, such as Le Boulevard des Capucines sous la pluie, the fragmentation of the brushstroke achieves an almost systematic precision, which seems less concerned with a faithful transcription of contours than with the elaboration of a luminous texture capable of transcending urban reality.

Wet cobblestones, glittering shop windows and the parasols of passers-by are not described, but constructed, through a skilful play of facets and chromatic contrasts.

This process recalls, in many ways, post-impressionist research, where the unity of a worked surface takes precedence over the optical illusion of volumes.

At Cortès, this approach is accompanied by a methodical treatment of light and reflections, where the palette, dominated by pearl grays and warm browns, plays on muted nuances to better accentuate the intensity of points of light.

Lamp posts and puddles become structuring elements, not so much for their narrative function as for their role in the construction of a continuous pictorial space.

This standardization of surfaces, coupled with a sensitivity to the very matter of paint, gives his work an almost tactile dimension, where each brushstroke seems animated by a concern to make the changing substance of the city recognized.

Artistic influences of Édouard Cortes

Artistic influences of Édouard Cortès are part of the Post-Impressionist tradition, where the innovations of masters such as Monet and Pissarro find a particular resonance in his painting.

Like the latter, he strives to translate the effects of light and atmosphere, but turns away from them in favor of a structural rigor inherited from French academicism.

The precision of his drawing, the careful organization of his compositions and his frequent use of linear perspective recall the teachings of 19th-century masters such as Alfred Stevens or Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, whose taste for an ordered observation of landscape he takes up.

In his urban views, particularly those of Parisian boulevards, Cortès dialogues with modernity, evoking through his choice of subjects the approach of Caillebotte, while incorporating a sensibility close to that of the Venetian painters in his treatment of reflections and wet surfaces.

His chromatic ranges, oscillating between brown, gray and ochre tones, evoke the soothing harmonies of Whistler, while the vibrant atmosphere of his night scenes reflects an Impressionist heritage reworked with poetic intent.

In his case, each influence interweaves to create a vision where descriptive realism is combined with a visual reverie that is properly unique.

The life and career of Édouard Cortes

Édouard Cortès, born in 1882 in Lagny-sur-Marne, grew up in a family of artists. His father, a painter himself, guided his first steps in art. At an early age, he turned to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he developed a particular sensitivity to urban scenes.

From his earliest entries at the Salon des Artistes Français, he attracted attention, particularly with his depictions of Paris, its streets lit with the changing moods of different times of day. His work is distinguished by a unique ability to capture the play of light and urban atmospheres.

Cortès is often described as a "painter of Paris" for his deep love of the city, which he transcribes in his scenes of streets, squares and quays, sublimated by light.

Traffic lights, lampposts, lively terraces, boat-lined quays, everything seems to melt under his brush in a silent choreography, like a luminous ballet frozen in time.

While his work is in the Impressionist tradition, he departs from it with his attention to detail and a more accomplished technique, particularly in the precision of perspective and the subtleties of reflections.

His street scenes in the rain, for example, deploy effects of reflected light on the cobblestones, capturing fleeting moments when everyday life seems suspended.

Cortès, while capturing the modernity of the capital, manages to preserve its timeless aspect, in a subtle balance between movement and silence. The city he paints, vibrant with life, is nevertheless always imbued with a fragile serenity, as if each scene could dissipate in a breath.

Focus on La rue de Rivoli, 1920, Édouard Cortès

In the 1920s, Cortès, in his Paris street scenes such as La Rue de Rivoli (Musée Marmottan, Paris), chose to capture moments when the light of Paris, light and mysterious, seems to bathe the entire environment.

He uses the restricted, nuanced palette of gray and beige, which, through their simplicity and sobriety, make the light softer, almost ethereal.

The facades of the buildings, as if grazed by a ray of sunlight filtered through an overcast sky, take on almost silvery tones, which give the landscape a gentle depth, but also a distance, as if Paris itself were set apart, observed through a light veil.

Like his contemporaries, such as Gustave Caillebotte, who, through photography and the particular framing of his canvases, had succeeded in translating the modernity of the city, Cortès too seems to be witnessing this modernity.

But he chooses to freeze this world in a softer, more subdued light, where passers-by are only furtive shadows, where architecture becomes a living, but almost silent mass.

It's a Paris that, under his brush, seems to stretch in time, like a nostalgic, intimate black-and-white photograph. He is far removed from the frenzy of his predecessors' canvases, capturing instead the poetry that emerges from everyday life, that suspended moment that just begs to be admired.

Post-Impressionism and twentieth-century art criticism

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Post-Impressionism, initially viewed with suspicion, saw its importance reassessed by a changing art criticism. This movement, the successor to Impressionism, took new directions that intrigued and divided observers.

Although controversial for their subjective approach, artists such as Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin gradually began to be recognized for their boldness and ability to go beyond Impressionist research into light and movement.

The first, often unflattering judgments gave way to a more nuanced reading of their work. Influential critic Roger Fry saw in Cézanne's work a redefinition of form and structure, opening up new perspectives on composition and inspiring a whole generation of modern artists.

For Fry, these Post-Impressionist artists no longer seek merely to capture the moment, but to reveal a deeper reality, where color and form express a personal feeling.

Post-Impressionism, far from being limited to an extension of Impressionism, is now seen as a key stage in modernity. Twentieth-century critics saw the movement as a landmark break with convention, heralding the avant-gardes of Cubism and Fauvism.

What was once considered puzzling art became a benchmark for subsequent generations, propelling Post-Impressionism as a pillar of the century's artistic evolution.

Edouard Cortès's imprint on his period

In the 1920s, Cortès, in his Parisian street scenes such as La Rue de Rivoli (Musée Marmottan, Paris), chose to capture moments when the light of Paris, light and mysterious, seems to bathe the entire environment.

He uses the restricted, nuanced palette of gray and beige, which, through their simplicity and sobriety, make the light softer, almost ethereal.

The facades of the buildings, as if grazed by a ray of sunlight filtered through an overcast sky, take on almost silvery tones, which give the landscape a gentle depth, but also a distance, as if Paris itself were set apart, observed through a light veil.

Like his contemporaries, such as Gustave Caillebotte, who, through photography and the particular framing of his canvases, had succeeded in translating the modernity of the city, Cortès too seems to be witnessing this modernity.

But he chooses to freeze this world in a softer, more subdued light, where passers-by are but furtive shadows, where architecture becomes a living, but almost silent, mass. It's a Paris that, under his brush, seems to stretch in time, like a nostalgic, intimate black-and-white photo.

His signature

Not all Édouard Cortès's works are signed.

Although there are variations, here's a first example of his signature:  

Expertise your property  

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