Paul Emile Chabas

Paul Emile Chabas was a painter and member of the Académie des beaux-arts living from 1869 to 1937 in France. He was a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905).

Paul Chabas's September Morn wins the kitsch label because it lacks interesting features: contrast, coordinated lines, and a worthy subject but rather leans toward the melodramatic. Its success rather derived from scandal than from anything else. Ironically the scandal causing this fame was provoked by the person that wanted to prohibit people ever seeing it - if he had done nothing, it's likely nobody would even remember the painting

His preferential subject was a nude young girl in a natural setting. His most famous painting is September Morn, not because it was particularly better or worse than any other of his paintings, but because it was reproduced massively following a scandal, set afire by Anthony Comstock, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice . Ultimately, the painting would be labelled as - and often cited as an example of - Kitsch, which in that case would probably apply to most other works by Chabas too.