Georges Leroux (1877-1957)

Georges Leroux is considered a painter, engraver and illustrator from the French school. He was born August 3, 1877 in Paris and died in 1957. He received his formal art training at the Beaux-Arts Academie under Leon Joseph Bonnat (1883-1922).

At the outbreak of the First World War, Leroux joined the French Army and served on the Western Front in France and Belgium. He later recalled how on one reconnaissance mission he saw “a group of French soldiers taking shelter in a great shell-hole full of water”. That evening he made sketches of what he had seen and later painted “L’Enfer (Hell).” One critic remarked that the Leroux had “produced a work which attempts to represent as accurately as possible the unreprehensible reality of war”. Another one of Georges Leroux’s more notable works “Dans la grande Galerie du Louvre”, which was painted for an exhibition at the Louvre, has been compared with the works of hyperrealist Edward Hopper.

George Leroux was a regular exhibitor at the Salon des Artistes Française where he was awarded the third class medal in 1903 and the Prix de Rome of 1906. In 1908, Leroux was honored with one of France’s awards to Chevalier in the Legion of Honor. He won a second class medal for 1911 and the Prix de Henner in 1920.