Paul-Vanier Beaulieu

Paul-Vanier Beaulieu, born in 1910 in Montreal and died in 1996 in Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts, was a Québécois painter. A versatile artist, he was known for his landscapes and still lifes, as well as his abstract paintings.

In 1927, after being expelled from college, he enrolled at the École des beaux-arts. He was disappointed with the education he received there and left before graduating. He thus entered the job market in the midst of an economic crisis. In 1938, he moved to Paris, specifically to the Montparnasse district, where he joined his brother Claude, who was studying architecture. But in the summer of 1940, the two brothers were taken prisoner by the German invaders. They were not released from their internment camp until August 1944, at the time of the Liberation.

Beaulieu returned briefly to Montreal before moving back to Montparnasse in 1947. Over the next few years, he held numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and Montreal, where his brother Gérard promoted his work.

He returned to live permanently in Quebec in 1973, after buying a house in Saint-Sauveur-des-Monts (now Saint-Sauveur). He spent the last years of his life there. In 1994, Galerie Simon Blais presented a selection of his watercolours, drawings, and prints created between 1950 and 1971.

He died in 1996 at the age of 86. The Musée d'art de Saint-Hilaire (now the Musée des beaux-arts de Mont-Saint-Hilaire) then organized a retrospective of his work.

Sources: Wikipedia, Musée des beaux-arts de Mont-Saint-Hilaire