Paul Lucien Dessau Art

A beautifully whimsical c.1930 oil on canvas titled ''St. James Palace'' by Paul Lucien Dessau which depicts a Guardsman with a tuba and a young girl holding balloons. The artist is best known for his WW2 portraits of servicemen and women that he produced whilst part of a National Fire Service artist's committee. The work is signed and inscribed lower right and presented in a painted and silver gilt frame. Artist: Paul Lucien Dessau (British, 1909-1999) Title: St. James Palace Medium: Oil on canvas Size: 20.5 x 16.5 inches (52 x 42 cm) including the frame Paul Dessau was born in London, the third of four children. His father died when he was young and he did not do well at school. On leaving school he joined a commercial art studio as an apprentice, mostly doing catalogue work for department stores. In due course, he left to start his own design studio with his brother Bernard, who was also known as Dewsbury Dessau. Whilst continuing to work, Paul Dessau began to study part-time at the Hornsey School of Art and then took anatomy classes at the Central School of Art and Design and eventually began to show works at various London galleries. At the start of the Second World War Paul Dessau, and his brother Bernard, joined the Auxiliary Fire Service, which in 1941 became the National Fire Service. A number of artists had joined the NFS and a firemen artists' committee was formed which included Bernard Hailstone, Leonard Rosoman, Norman Hepple and Robert Coram as well as Dessau. The NFS agreed to assist the artists as long as their fire-fighting duties were not adversely affected and the War Artists' Advisory Committee, WAAC, agreed to consider purchasing any works produced. In time, WAAC were to purchase at least two paintings by Dessau. As well as contributing to both WAAC and specialist civil defence art shows, the firemen held several of their own exhibitions. In 1941, the Firemen Artist Group attracted some 64,000 people in a month to the first of twenty exhibitions they were to hold at the Cooling Galleries. In addition, four firemen artist exhibitions were held at the Royal Academy and then toured around Britain during the war whilst a further two exhibitions toured America and Canada. Several works by Dessau featured in these wartime exhibitions including And So To Bed, showing a carefully laid-out uniform of an auxiliary fireman, and several fine portraits including one of Divisional Officer Blackstone, who was awarded the George Medal for his actions after a fire station was bombed during the Blitz. Menace is a set of four canvases, now in the London Fire...

This charming landscape scene looks across rolling summer fields. Painted in an impressionist style with a textured surface. Signed to the lower rig...