Mont-dore - Paul Mascart - Signed Oil On Canvas - New Caledonia

Paul Mascart (1874 - 1958) Born in Condé-sur-l'Escaut in France (Nord department). At the age of 20, he enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Rouen and won first prizes for drawing. After six years in the cavalry, he returned to the customs administration where he spent his entire career. From 1903 to 1927, he was stationed in Normandy and devoted most of his free time to painting. He painted landscapes and portraits. He exhibited for the first time in Rouen in 1905 and participated in the creation in 1906 of the Société des Peintres Rouennais. He also exhibits in Paris. One of his sons, Roland, shows an inclination for drawing and follows his father in his footsteps. The tropics have long held a fascination for Paul Mascart and the opportunity arose in 1928 from a job offer in New Caledonia. The whole family embarked in Marseille on March 26, 1929. Two months of crossing during which he met Adrien Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès, with stopovers in the West Indies and Tahiti before touching the port of Nouméa to take charge of the Customs Service there. During the five years of their stay in New Caledonia, Paul and his son Roland will not stop crisscrossing Grande Terre and the Loyalty Islands to discover the deep territory to capture, thanks to their camera and their brushes, the reality of the bush and the life of the Kanak population. An abundant production of drawings, pastels and oils followed. Several of their works were sent to Paris for the Colonial Exhibition of 1931, where they rubbed shoulders with those of Gauguin and Pierre Loti. End of the Caledonian stay in 1934, and return to France via Indochina, Djibouti, Egypt. Retired two years later, Paul Mascart now lives in Paris where he devotes all his time to painting and participates in numerous exhibitions of his Norman or Oceanian works. In 1951, last opportunity for a stay in the tropics, in Martinique where his son Daniel directs the Customs service.
The work presented here is from the Caledonian period with an oil on canvas probably located in St Louis in the commune of Mont-Dore, with a river in the foreground (La Thi?) and the mountain of the same name or the Koghi mountains in background.