Paul Girol

Paul Girol himself evokes it: “I was born to draw. As a child, raised by my grandparents, I spent hours in my grandfather's workshop, sketching while watching him sculpt admirable frames composed from his drawings or making copies in various styles – in a warm atmosphere mingling the smell of wood shavings with that of strong glue melting in a bain-marie on the corner of a small heart-shaped stove. When we returned home with the work finished, my favorite models were still my grandfather, the rolled cigarette burning his large moustache, a second one resting on his ear, or my grandmother with her little black headscarf framing a face full of gentleness, knitting or going about household chores."

Lucien Simon

He began attending evening classes on Boulevard du Montparnasse in Paris at a very young age before entering the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1928. There, as a student of Lucien Simon, his fellow students included Yves Brayer, Robert Humblot, Georges Rohner, and Lucien Fontanarosa. To finance his studies, he worked in a theater set designer's studio, painting large-scale window displays for department stores on the boulevard and in provincial shops (his sponge-like technique, which allowed him to work quickly and on a grand scale, earned him the nickname "the sponge man"). Finally, he worked for three and a half years as an usher at the Théâtre Pigalle. He kept a letter signed by Lucien Simon, in which he received the following advice: "Paint for your own pleasure. As a painter, you must love to paint. The rest is a matter of chance, encounters, joys, or sorrows that will complete your character."

Although he interrupted his studies when, in 1934, a scholarship obtained at the Salon des artistes français thanks to his painting allowed him to discover Spain (Burgos, Madrid, Toledo) and when, upon his return, Armand Drouant organized his first solo exhibition in his gallery which was then still located on rue de Seine [ he was nevertheless selected to compete for the Prix de Rome in 1939.

Pierre Imbourg, in a 1961 text devoted to the journey of Paul Girol, recounts the latter's hikes in Saint-Maur and its surroundings, but also in the region of Chaumont-en-Vexin where his parents had retired since 1939, the first landscapes on the theme of which, "if they still reveal a certain conformism, are nonetheless thoughtful and accomplished works", before the period linked to Brittany which he traveled for years, "setting up his easel a little everywhere, in Pont-Aven as in Concarneau, in Roscoff as in Doëlan, transcribing with true and personal accents the light of the Breton sky, animating the melancholy of the boats in dry dock in Doëlan near which stands out the silhouette of his favorite model, his wife". Then came his discovery of Portugal, to which he would return every year, settling in Nazaré, "perhaps," Pierre Imbourg understands, "because his most secret aspirations materialized there and he discovered, there, the spectacle of an unknown humanity, colors, nature, a true picturesqueness that fostered his inspiration." Bernard Esdras-Gosse confirms: "Amazed by the Portuguese sun, the boats lying on the shore of Nazaré, the great white sails of the Extremadura windmills, the humble whitewashed houses of the fishermen, attentive to the slow gait of the women, the simple ballet of the washerwomen, the noisy games of children on the beach, he wants to sweep us away completely in his joy."