Musings on Paul de Longpré

By Carol Lowrey

During a recent visit to L.A., I happened to stay in West Hollywood, in a historic Art Deco hotel located on Sunset Boulevard. My accommodations were situated directly next door to William S. Hart Park, a small, hilly enclave that I wandered through one sunny morning. As I exited the south entrance, I came out on De Longpré Avenue, a quiet, crescent-shaped thoroughfare lined with low-rise apartment buildings surrounded by foliage and blossoms. The street name, of course, was easily recognizable to me, for it honors Paul de Longpré (1855-1911), a French-born watercolorist who specialized in the portrayal of flowers.

Once referred to as the “King of the flower painters,” de Longpré began creating depictions of blossoms in France. In 1890 he came to New York to execute a commission and, after losing most of his savings in a bank failure in Paris, he decided to remain in the United States to explore new opportunities for patronage. He initially supported himself by teaching and working as a horticultural illustrator while painting in his spare time. De Longpré’s gamble that he could make it in the competitive New York art world paid off: his career came in to its own in 1895, when an exhibition of his work at the American Art Galleries created a major stir, attracting throngs of gallery-goers and admiring collectors eager to purchase one of his watercolors for their dining-rooms and parlors. Other successful shows in New York, Boston and Philadelphia soon followed, topped off by an article in the New York Times Illustrated Magazine in which de Longpré was described as “a poetical-botanical painter.” These words were spot on, for de Longpré’s floral vignettes (see above) were executed in an accessible realist style, but without the abundant detail we associate with botanical art; instead, he applied his pigments in delicate, translucent washes, manipulating color, form and light to reveal the underlying lyricism of his subject.

Spurred on by strong sales, de Longpré recouped his fortune by the turn of the century. Wanting to live in a place where he could obtain fresh flowers year round, he moved his family to L.A. in 1899, going on to build an exotic Moorish-style residence, surrounded by three acres of garden, in Whitley Heights, Hollywood. There, he continued to paint all varieties of flowers, ranging from lush roses (see Four Pink Roses at left) to the state flower (see A Bunch of California Poppies below); as tourists and Angelenos flocked to see his home, studio and art gallery, he became a local celebrity.

As I strolled through this part of West Hollywood, I wondered if residents of the neighborhood had any idea as to who de Longpré actually was. There is also a park named after him at 1350 North Cherokee Avenue and an apartment building at 6520 De Longpré Avenue also bears his name. His real legacy though, exists in the form of the evocative still lifes that secured him a place in the annals of American still life painting and that continue to delight art lovers today.

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* For those interested in learning more about de Longpré’s life and career, I’d advise reading Nancy C. Hall’s, The Life and Art of Paul de Longpré (Irvine Museum, 2001)