Paul Maze
1887-1979

In 1945, Dunoyer de Segonzac wrote "Paul Maze is above all an intuitive artist; he is the antithesis of the contemporary school of painting which wishes to ignore nature and to practice an art of the laboratory. Paul Maze's Norman origin, his childhood spent in the region of the estuary of the Seine, classifies him with the painters of Hornfleur, Rouen and Le Havre, - Jongkind, Boudin and Monet are his visual ancestors; and like them, with his 'gris colore' he is the poet of the sky and water. Marvellously gifted, overflowing with life, his talent evokes wonderfully everything that is fluid, mobile and living in nature."

Six years earlier in 1939 Sir Winston Churchill wrote the foreword for the catalogue of Paul Maze's first New York exhibition "His great knowledge of painting and draughtsmanship have enabled him to perfect his remarkable gift, with the fewest of strokes he can create an expression at once true and beautiful. Here is no toiling seeker after pre-conscious effects, but a vivid and powerful interpreter to us of the forces and harmony of nature." Such were the opinions of two of Paul Maze’s contemporary artists; one a professional and one a gifted amateur.

Paul was born in Le Havre in 1887, the son of a French merchant. He joined the French army in 1914 but by the end of World War I, he had been seconded to the British Army. After the war he wrote a book on his experiences "A Frenchman in Khaki", and when World War II began, he joined the British Army again. But between those two horrendous and momentous events, Maze lived in Paris where he met Vuillard, Bonnard, Segonzac, Levy and Derain, the latter becoming a great influence in the development of Paul's talents. In earlier years as a young man in Le Havre, he had met Dufy, Braque and Friez, all of whom made a lasting impression on the young artist during his formative years.

At the end of World War I, Paul Maze made his home in England but he never lost contact with his native France. The wealth of subject matter that form his paintings are direct, spontaneous and free - like the artist himself. He has exhibited widely in the United States; 1952 with Wildenstein in New York and in 2000 the University of Richmond, Va held a retrospective in his honour.

Many important museums have acquired examples of his work, including the Tate Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum. He features in private collections world wide, but the acquisition of one of his pictures by the late Queen Mother gave him perhaps the greatest pleasure.

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