New! St. Anthony of Padua Preaching to the Fish – Edouard Jerôme Paupion– Beautiful Catholic Art Print – Archival Quality

This picture is widely mis-identified on the internet as a picture of St. Francis. But St. Francis preached to attentive birds. It was St. Anthony of Padua, his protégé, who preached to the fish. This is one of our favorite stories about Anthony. We’ve had our eye out for a long time to find the right painting of it to offer to you. This one is by French Symbolist painter Edouard Paupion, and it has the clarity of subject matter and beauty we were looking for.

St. Anthony of Padua was born as Fernando Bulhom in Lisbon. He entered the seminary at age 15 and died about 20 years later in 1231 AD, after having lived a life of astonishing holiness. He was declared a Saint one year later, and has since been declared a Doctor of the Church. He was a great preacher, stirring huge crowds to greater piety. He is a great Saint to get to know; one of the reasons is that he is a helper in Heaven who finds lost things. I turn to him all the time.

Edouard Jerôme Paupion (1854 - 1912) was called a Symbolist painter because the Symbolists had shifted from straight ahead realistic painting. They still kept to realistic objects in a narrative, but made the objects look more like stylized versions, or symbols, of themselves. This helped better convey the meaning of the story. He painted this in 1898. It is on display at the Museum of Fine Arts and Archaeology (Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie de Besançon) in Besançon, France. Paupuon signed the picture by naming the boat after himself, a nice genial touch

** IMPORTANT ** THE IMAGE IS SMALLER THAN THE PAPER! There is a blank border around the image. Approximately 0.5" wide for 5x7, 1.3" for 8.5x11, 1.6" for 11x14, and 1.75" for 13x17 and 16x20. For the two poster sizes, 18x24 and 24x36, we use 0.5" borders. We do this because the ratio of the rectangle of the art almost never matches the rectangle of the paper, and if it did happen to match one size, it would not match the others. Most fine art printers do this because otherwise they’d have to crop the art or warp it to make it fit the paper. The border looks good. It gives the picture a faux matted appearance.

There is almost always a little more border either on the left-right sides, or the top-bottom, depending on whether the ratio of the art is wider or taller than the paper.

We make Archival Quality fine art prints:

– Acid-free paper

– Archival pigments

– Cardboard backer for sizes 11x14 and less.

– Above story of the art

– Enclosed in a tight-fitting, crystal-clear bag.

– Rated to last 200+ years without fading if kept dry and out of the direct sun.

Thanks for your interest!

+JMJ+

Sue & John

Lincoln, Nebraska

“In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art.”

~ St. Pope John Paul II

Original image is out-of-copyright. Descriptive text and any image alterations (hence the whole new image) © by Sue Kouma Johnson – Classic Catholic Art.