Paul Cornoyer Biography

Paul Cornoyer is world famous for his paintings of New York City and its suburbs. This painter-teacher was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1864 and died in East Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1923 (where he moved in1917).

Cornoyer first studied at the St. Louis School of Fine Art (1881) and first exhibited in 1887. He went to Paris in 1889 and lived there until 1894, while studying painting at the Academie Julian in Paris with Lefebvre and Constant and with Louis Blanc. In 1899, friend and collector of Cornoyer's work William Merritt Chase encourage Cornoyer to come to New York City. By that time he was somewhat famous in St. Louis for having painted a mural for Planter's Hotel of the city (1894) and large canvas A View of St. Louis that showed Eads Bridge.

His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Institute Museum, NY; Dallas AA; Smithsonian Institute; Seattle Art Museum, Washington; Newark AA; St. Louis Art Museum; Kansas City Museum of Fine Art; Yale University Art Gallery; Smith College; High Museum of Fine Art; Hickory Museum of At (NC), Newark Museum and the Butler Institute of American Art.