Léon Pourtau

Léon Pourtau was a French painter and musician, born in Bordeaux around 1868 and died in 1898. He is notable for combining a career as a professional musician with a painting practice shaped by Pointillism, an uncommon pairing at the time.

At fifteen, working as an apprentice typesetter, he left Bordeaux for Paris, where he worked in a small restaurant on the Rue Lafayette frequented by musicians of the Orchestre Lamoureux. Through them he found work as a clarinetist in a café-chantant, and later joined a circus band. Back in Paris he studied at the Conservatoire, and at only twenty-two he became a professor at the Conservatoire de Lyon. He met Georges Seurat, who passed on the Pointillist technique to him. His painting Quatre heures de l'après-midi was shown in Philadelphia during the 1896–1897 winter, and this was his only exhibition. He was travelling back to Le Havre aboard the liner La Bourgogne when it collided with the British sailing ship Cromartyshire off Sable Island. Pourtau died in the accident.