He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where his instructors included Thomas Eakins,[4] whom Paulus later remembered as "very kindly and humorous.

"[5][6] In Europe, Paulus became a pupil of Ludwig von Löfftz at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, and of Léon Bonnat at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

[2][7] From 1898 he split his time between Detroit and Bruges, Belgium, where kept a studio and lived for part of each year, taking inspiration for his etchings from the markets, canals, and buildings of the city.

[13] In 1914, as World War I loomed, Paulus had two etchings accepted for the Exposition Générale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, scheduled to open May 9 and to close November 2.

"The great war…had a paralytic effect upon the art production of Mr. Paulus," who "agonized over the titanic struggle, feeling keenly the disasters, or jubilating over the victories as they were reported…For three years he waited for the inspiration which did not come."

"[18] Later that year the Institute acquired his painting Fish Market of Bruges, a work "characterized by a true artist's insight into the beauty of things," capturing the "atmospheric affect which pervades that medieval city and gives it its peculiar individuality.

[22] It appears to be in this period, when Gilbert was at a low ebb and the younger Paulus was on the rise (he first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1904), that the two Anglophone artists in Bruges became close friends and colleagues.

It suggests something of the quality which one finds in the verse of Gérard de Nerval: it is the art of nerves, of the incessant striving after subtle and elusive achievement, something on the borderland of imagination.

His work, which is suggestive rather than didactic, is yet so replete with health and vigour, that it never fails to instruct, as well as charm, and it is hoped that ere long his name will be added to the distinguished list of artists England is so proud to welcome from America.

[28]Another family friend was the American journalist and newspaper executive Edmund Wood Booth [fr] (1866–1927), whose portrait Paulus painted in 1911.

Etchings inscribed and gifted to "my old friend Edmund Booth" and to his children Esther and Ted by Paulus and his wife Adele indicate the families knew one another in both Michigan and Belgium.