Antoine
PONCHIN

Antoine Ponchin (1872-1933) was a French painter known mainly for his numerous landscapes. Father of the painter Joseph Henri Ponchin, the two of them quickly painted together; starting with views of Martigues, their expeditions led them to the Orient with Indochina as their final destination. His trip to Indochina took place in 1922 when he won the Indochina Prize; this distinction allowed him to be sent by the Minister of Colonies on a mission to the city of Hanoi between 1922 and 1923. In addition to Asia, Antoine Ponchin traveled a lot with his son, notably to Italy where they settled for a time in Venice, but despite this, he remained deeply attached to his native region, Provence, and to his birthplace, Marseille. He also owes this attachment to his masters Julien Gustave Gagliardini and Jean-Baptiste Olive. Both were masters of light and landscape, Gagliardini quickly abandoning his first activity in Paris to devote himself to landscapes and Jean-Baptiste Olive, a student at the École des Beaux-Arts de Marseille, tirelessly painting the Old Port and its surroundings. It is with this Provencal heritage and a life of travel and exoticism that Antoine Ponchin decided in the autumn of his life, at the end of the 1920s, to return to the South, his native region, to once again put the lights of Provence on his canvas.
 

Click here to discover the works of his son Jos Henri Ponchin