Worcester Art Museum
1932-1935
Following high school, Paul was enrolled with the Worcester Art Museum School. There he remained for three years and gained a thorough academic background in painting classical art, using many techniques and mediums.
Homer, Sargent and Pinkham-Ryder
Watercolor became a favored medium . He was influenced by the handsome selection of John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer watercolors hanging in the Worcester Museum. His analytical mind was most excited by the technical ability these artists had in achieving transparencies. Fontaine particularly enjoyed Sergent's ability to visually transpose elements from nature, but he used more plastic constructions than Sergent.
In addition, Fontaine particularly studied Albert Pinkham Ryder's ability to reduce natural shapes to their abstract essence. This style is also reminiscent of Thomas Hart Benton who, along with Steward Curry, portrayed the American scene outside the New York School of Social Realism. The effect of promoting American indigenous art was a sincere effort to establish themselves in face of competition from international modernism.
Then a national cultural consciousness was fostered by governmental support of the arts. Paul Fontaine signed an artist's contract with the Civilian Conservation Corps. As a condition of employment he was required to paint scenes of camp life in "pictorial representational manner."