Rating and value of paintings by Édouard Cortès

If you own a work by or based on the artist Édouard Cortes and would like to know its value, our state-approved experts and auctioneers can help you.

Our specialists will carry out a free appraisal of your work, and provide you with a precise estimate of its current market value.

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Artist's rating and value

Thanks to their serene, luminous atmosphere, Édouard Cortes's works have proved 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 fetched unprecedented sums, such as his 1905 painting Paris Evening , which fetched €100,800 against an estimate of €70,000-90,000.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

The artist's works and style

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

The wet cobblestones, glittering shop windows and parasols of passers-by are not described, but constructed, through a skilful interplay of facets and chromatic contrasts.

In many ways, this process is reminiscent of post-impressionist research, where the unity of a worked surface takes precedence over the optical illusion of volumes.

In 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.

Streetlamps and puddles become structuring elements, not so much for their narrative function as for their role in constructing a continuous pictorial space.

This uniformity of surfaces, coupled with a sensitivity to the very material of the paint, gives his work an almost tactile dimension, where each brushstroke seems driven by a concern to recognize the changing substance of the city.

Édouard Cortes' artistic influences

Édouard Cortès's artistic influences 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 asAlfred Stevens or Jean-Baptiste Camille Corotwhose taste for orderly observation of the landscape he adopts.

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

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

Each influence is interwoven to create a vision in which descriptive realism is combined with a unique visual reverie.

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 illuminated streets with their changing moods at 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 transcribed in his scenes of streets, squares and quays, sublimated by light.

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

Although his work is rooted 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 subtlety 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 Rue de Rivoli, 1920, Édouard Cortès

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

He uses a restricted, nuanced palette of greys and beiges, whose simplicity and sobriety make the light softer, almost ethereal.

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

Like his contemporaries, such as Gustave Caillebotte, who used photography and the special framing of his canvases to convey the modernity of the city, Cortès too seems to be a witness to this modernity.

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

It's a Paris that, under his brush, seems to stretch out in time, like a black-and-white photograph, nostalgic and intimate. It's a far cry from the frenetic canvases of his predecessors, capturing instead the poetry that emanates from everyday life, that suspended moment that 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 re-evaluated 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.

Initial judgments, often unflattering, 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 were no longer simply seeking to capture the moment, but to reveal a deeper reality, where color and form express a personal feeling.

Far from being a mere extension of Impressionism, Post-Impressionism is now seen as a key stage in modernism. Twentieth-century critics see this movement as a landmark break with convention, heralding the avant-gardes of Cubism and Fauvism.

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

Edouard Cortès' 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 where the light of Paris, light and mysterious, seems to bathe the entire environment.

He uses a restricted, nuanced palette of greys and beiges, whose simplicity and sobriety make the light softer, almost ethereal.

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

Like his contemporaries, such as Gustave Caillebotte, who used photography and the special framing of his canvases to convey the modernity of the city, Cortès too seems to be a witness to 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. Under his brush, Paris seems to stretch out in time, like a nostalgic, intimate black-and-white photograph.

His signature

Not all works by Édouard Cortès are signed.

Although there are variations, here is a first example of its signature:  

Appraising your property  

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