Paul Biva

Paul Biva (Montmartre 19 September 1851 – 13 June 1900, Avon, Seine-et-Marne) was a French painter. His paintings, both Realist, Naturalist in effect, principally represented intricate landscape paintings or elaborate flower settings, much as the work of his older brother, the artist Henri Biva (1848–1929). Paul Biva was a distinguished member of National Horticultural Society of France from 1898 until his untimely death two years later. Biva Paul was raised in a family originally from Alsace and Grisons. His father, Charles Biva (1821 Mulhouse – 1884 Paris) was a graphic designer and entrepreneur. In 1845 he opened a wallpaper factory in Montmartre. Very young, the two brothers, Paul and Henri Biva, learned to draft designs for the family business. Biva's delicacy and sureness of line features, colors and compositions of bouquets and still lifes comes in part from this particular training—also in the artistic context of Montmartre at the time. In addition to the burden of work for the family business, Paul Biva enlisted in the Garde Nationale for compulsory military service during a difficult political and social period: the War of 1870 just ended, initiating the insurgency period of the City of Paris. After the Salon of 1878, Paul Biva almost continuously exhibited to Salon des artistes français and other salons in Paris and Province until his untimely death in 1900. The Baron Alphonse James de Rothschild purchased Chrysanthèmes, exhibited by Paul Biva at the Salon of 1893 and donated to the Musée de Saint-Malo. Paul Biva lived at 128, rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière, and from 1897 at 12, rue d'Hauteville, according to the catalogue of 1912 Salon de la Société des artistes français. His artistic legacy mixes the baroque tradition of Dutch still lifes, the simplicity of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), rediscovered at the time by the artistic community, and the energy of painters Realist painting after the biennial Salon of 1850. Thereafter, Paul Biva became sensitive to Impressionist movement of the 1870s.