Paul Peel

When the Hungarian government needed money following its defeat in World War I, it sold a number of art treasures. Among them was a painting by a Canadian artist that is now a prize possession of the Art Gallery of Ontario. Titled “After the Bath,” it was painted by Paul Peel, a native of London, Ontario.

Peel won third prize for it at the Paris Salon in 1890 and, in 1891, sold it to the Hungarian government for 8,000 francs despite more lucrative offers from well-known patrons of the arts because he wanted it hung in a public institution. French actress Sarah Bernhardt declared, “I would have been willing to pay any price for it because the little girl with the red top-knot reminded me so much of myself when I was little.” That is one of the reasons the painting became one of the most reproduced works in the world. As early as 1895, one critic wrote that “His work had the misfortune of being too popular, so that cheap reproductions of his rosy youngsters warming themselves after a bath ... have become quite common, and have been used as advertisements of soap, powder and the like.” Capitalizing on this were companies such as Seeman & Co. of Leipzig, Braun of Germany, the French firm of Florillo in cabinet card photographs and the Artotype Company in the United States. One photographer in New York even posed children the same way Peel had, photographed them, and sold the photographs as “living pictures.”

Paul and a sister, Mildred, four years his senior, were two of five children of John R. Peel, a marble cutter interested in the arts who came from England with his wife to London, Ontario, in 1856 and eventually opened a successful monument business in that city. At an early age, Paul, the youngest, showed a remarkable talent. His father, who also taught art at the Old Mechanics Institute and held classes at the back of his shop, encouraged him. For two years Paul also studied under an English painter, William Lees Judson, who had settled in London before becoming founder and first dean of the College of Fine Arts in Los Angeles. By 1877 Paul, then 17, had won prizes at the city’s Western Fall Fair and had been accepted as a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia where he studied for three years.

“After the Bath” brought Paul Peel international recognition when it was awarded a bronze medal in 1890 by the judges of La Société des Artistes Français, Paris. The following year it was purchased by the Hungarian government. [Art Gallery Of Ontario]

Returning to Canada, he briefly set up a studio in Toronto but soon left for England and thence to France in 1881 where he first painted in Brittany and then moved to Paris to study under such eminent artists as Boulanger, Gerome, and Constant at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian. Handsome with a well-trimmed Van Dyke, Peel was an accomplished fencer. His friendly, outgoing personality and fluency in French made him a popular member of France’s artistic community that included many Canadians and Americans. In 1882 he married Isaure Verdier from Denmark, a student painter of miniatures, whom he met through his sister Mildred while she was visiting him in Brittany. He kept in constant touch with his family, sending many of his paintings home. At the Western Fall Fair in 1883, he won six firsts but some complained that his father, as manager of the Fair’s art exhibit, had rigged the jury panel — all local clergymen. That year he also had his first painting accepted by the Paris Salon.

Peel worked hard. Unlike many young artists, he managed, through the sale of his paintings, to support a wife and two children: Robert, born in 1884, and Marguerite, born in 1886. In 1889 he won an honourable mention at the Paris Salon for a child study, “The Modest Model,” and the following year he painted his most famous work, “After the Bath,” which established him as one of the truly outstanding painters of young children. That same year he sold a pastel study to Princess Alexandra of England.

As his mother was seriously ill, Peel returned to Canada in July 1890 to visit his family. He stayed until November painting various Canadian scenes from London to Quebec City. Before returning to Europe after the death of his mother, he held an exhibition and auction in Toronto of more than 60 of his paintings. Although many of the city’s leading citizens attended, the sale of 57 of the paintings realized only a disappointing $2,746.
The single highest bid was $325 for “The Venetian Bather,” which was then loaned to a Yonge Street barroom and may thereby have been the first nude on display in Toronto. It was purchased by the National Gallery five years later. An article at the time of the auction reported, “There was a great deal of curiosity and a large attendance at the sale but the pictures were sacrificed at ridiculous prices.” It suggested that Peel would have been wiser to have auctioned them in Paris.

1. "Self Portrait" [National Gallery Of Canada] 2.“Paul Peel in his Studio, Paris.” The unknown photographer captured the Canadian artist in 1889 surrounded by several of his best-known works including “Venetian Bather,” left/centre, and “The Modest Model,” right/centre, the latter winning honourable mention by the judges of the Paris Salon, 1889

On his return to Paris, Peel worked on a number of new paintings that continued to reflect traditional academic techniques in studio settings as well as landscapes and portraits. They included another nude entitled “La Jeunesse,” a portrait of his son, and“ The Dancing Doll.” A month before his 32nd birthday he suddenly became ill and died of a lung disorder. In the years since his death, Peel’s work has undergone criticisms and popularity. At the time of his death, the impressionist painters were sweeping aside the more traditional painters like Peel and, in the decade following the return of “After The Bath ”to Canada in 1922, Canadians took greater interest in the fresh and dramatic paintings of the Group of Seven.

In 1970, however, Canadian interest in Peel was revived when 34 works and 12 reproductions were exhibited in Ontario at the London Public Library and Art Museum. Four years later a comprehensive study of Peel’s work listed more than 200 of his paintings in galleries and private collections. And as Virginia Baker, author of a 1987 catalogue depicting more than 70 of his paintings for an exhibit at the London Regional Gallery and the Royal Ontario Museum, observes, “... he emerges, distanced from us by almost a century, as a painter of considerable authority who accomplished much during his brief professional life.”