Paul Jean Louis Gervais

Paul Jean Louis Gervais (1859 - 1944) - "Bath", oil on canvas - 66 x 81 cm

Gervais was a French painter who was fashionable around the end of the 19th century. He is known for his sensuous paintings of nude women. Gervais was a pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) and of Gabriel Ferrier (1847–1914). In 1887 he taught at the Académie Julian in 1887, where he taught many students, who also left a trail in art history.

In July 1891 Gervais won the Prix du Salon. Around 1900 Gervais produced the painting Fright, now lost but reproduced as the frontispiece to Filson Young's The Complete Motorist (1904). It depicted nymphs and centaurs fleeing from a car that was approaching them along a winding coast road with its headlights blazing. The painting was exhibited at the 1904 Salon. Gervais also decorated mansions in France, the casinos in Monaco and Nice and the Capitole in Toulouse.