Edward Cucuel

1875 San Francisco - 1954 Pasadena

The painter Edward Cucuel was born in San Francisco, USA in 1875. His father was a newspaper publisher. Thus, Cucuel was employed by The Examiner newspaper as an illustrator when he was a teenager. Cucuel came to Paris when he was only seventeen. There he studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts with Jean Léon Gérôme. In 1896 he returned to America; shortly afterwards he traveled to the Western Europe. In Germany, the painter joined the group of artists “Scholle”, in which Leo Putz was the most outstanding artist. Cucuel's painting is strongly influenced by French Impressionism. His work primarily includes portraits of women, nudes, light-flooded interiors and plein-air depictions showing society. Due to the war, Cucuel left Germany in 1939 and moved to the city of Pasadena, California, where he lived until his death in 1954.