Paul Peel was born in London, Ontario in 1860. His early art training was provided in London by his father, John Robert Peel, and William Lees Judson, then at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia under Thomas Eakins. He later moved to Paris where he received art instruction at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Jean-Paul Gerome and at the Acadmie Julien under Benjamin Constant, Henri Doucet, and Jules Lefebvre. He then traveled widely in Canada and Europe exhibiting as a member of the Ontario Society of Artists and the Royal Canadian Academy. He also exhibited at international shows like the Paris Salon.
Peel's work was very popular in both his lifetime and today. It is executed mainly in oil and employs genre, landscape, marine and portrait subjects. His conservative style reflected the official one then taught in the French government academies but, at the time of his death, Peel appeared to be changing his style toward impressionism. He died in Paris in 1892.
