George David Coulon was a Frenchman who emigrated to New Orleans in the 1830s. He is not to be confused with George A. Coulon, his son, a portraitist, nor Georges Coulon, a French Hyperrealist still life painter. George David painted portraits, scenic landscapes, and assisted with church murals. He also taught in schools and privately, restored old paintings, and he tinted photographs, a common practice in the nineteenth century. In these various activities he was aided by his wife, Paoline, and his children, Mary Elizabeth (Emma) and George, each of whom was an artist in their own right.
Coulon was born in Seloncourt, a region in eastern France near the border with Germany. He arrived in Louisiana at age ten; he later reported “as a child, I made drawings and colored them with indigo, the juice of herbs and berries.” His father hoped his son would follow in his shoes as a watchmaker, but the younger Coulon much preferred making art. He studied with local painters in New Orleans and in Paris with Anne-Louis Girodet, a student of Jacques-Louis David and an early Romantic painter.
Before turning to portraiture, in 1839 Coulon assisted muralist Léon Pomarède in painting a copy of Raphael’s Transfiguration in St. Patrick’s Church. He also helped with a ceiling fresco in the old criminal court of the New Orleans Historic District’s Cabildo, a stately Spanish colonial building. Beginning about 1853, Coulon collaborated with a photographer and enhanced his work with colors. Then between 1885 and 1897 Coulon completed a series of posthumous likenesses of seven Louisiana supreme court justices, possibly modeled from death masks.
Coulon was active in the local art scene; in 1880 he was one of the founders, along with Marshall J. Smith and Andres Molinary, of the Southern Art Union which evolved six years later into the Artists’ Association of New Orleans. Its mission was to promote an appreciation for the fine arts, and to that end held exhibitions and offered classes. In his late seventies, Coulon, at the urging of Bror Anders Wikstrom, undertook to write short biographies of fellow artists, a project that has proven to be a valuable resource on Louisiana art.