Best remembered for depictions of New York City, Paul Cornoyer was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He studied painting in Paris under Jules Lefebvre, Benjamin Constant, and Louis Blanc. He based his studio in New York, and his work was aligned with the Ash Can School aesthetic although his work was less gritty than the street scenes of Robert Henri, William Glackens, John Sloan, George Bellows, George Luks, and Everett Shinn.
“Approaching New York as Place, cityscape artists [such as Cornoyer] were primarily concerned with representing the city’s physical envelope and the impact of its built environment. Scene painters [including Henri, et. al.] on the other hand, were chiefly concerned with urban humanity.”
Cornoyer died in 1923 in East Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Owen Gallery credits “New Century Cityscapes: Or Painting the ‘New Metropolis” by Jan Seidler Ramirez in “Culturefront” (winter 1997-98).