The recovered paintings were stolen twelve years earlier from a gallery in Carmel, California. On November 30, 2000, four paintings by Edouard Leon Cortès were recovered in Kalispell, Montana, following an eight-month investigation conducted by the FBI. Later in life, his convictions led him to refuse the Légion d'Honneur from the French Government. In his last year of life, he was awarded the prestigious Prix Antoine-Quinson from the Salon de Vincennes. The paintings are regular Parisian street scenes that have been transformed by the shop lights and twilight glow of the late afternoon into beautiful colorful streets. His works were first exhibited in North America in 1945 and he achieved even greater success. Cortès lived a simple life amid a close circle of friends. His wife had died in 1918 and he soon married his sister-in-law Lucienne Joyeuse. He was later assigned in a different capacity to use his artistic talent to sketch enemy positions. Cortès was wounded by a bayonet during a battle, he survived and was taken to a military hospital, and awarded the Croix de Guerre.

He gained immediate recognition at age nineteen with his first exhibition.Īlthough Edouard Leon Cortes was a pacifist when war approached his local town he enrolled in a French Infantry Regiment at the age of 32. His father, Antonio Cortès, had been a painter for the Spanish Royal Court.Įdouard Cortes began his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the age of 17. Edouard Leon Cortès was born in Lagny-Sur-Marne, a small town near Paris.

Edouard leon cortes paintings