Edmond François Aman-Jean was a famous French painter, pastellist, and lithographer of his period, best known for his intriguing portrait paintings, most of which revolve around women. He was known for his wall paintings in public and official buildings such as the Sorbonne, in addition to his portraits. He was motivated by the inventive perceptions of Japanese art movement in Paris, as were other French painters at the time. The Pre-Raphaelite artists in England piqued his interest. He was a painter, printer, and poster designer in addition to being a painter. Aman-Jean was a close friend of JW’s who helped organize the International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers’ first exhibition in Knightsbridge, London, in May 1898. To learn more about Edmond Aman-Jean, read his entire biography.
Early Years And Education Of Edmond Aman-Jean
Jean was born in 1860 at Chevry-Cossigny, a little village three miles from Paris at the confluence of the Seine and Marne rivers. He began studying art at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris with Henri Lehmann in 1880.
He met Georges Seurat there, and the two later shared a studio in Paris in 1879. He then went on to study art under Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’ tutelage, serving as his assistant on the Sacred Grove. He was awarded a scholarship to study in Rome in 1886, and upon his return, he made friends with pioneer writers like Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, and Philippe-Auguste Villiers de l’Isle Adam.
A Career of Edmond Aman-Jean
Edmond was fully reliant on pictorial and pictographic traditions at a period when poets desired to challenge the language in order to build new consciousness. He was a master at capturing relaxed young women turned to the left in profile or gazing into space.
It was evident in his 1895 painting ‘Girl with Peacock,’ in which he used fragmented brushstrokes and color contrasts. The critic Camille Mauclair recognized Edmond Aman-Jean as a successor of the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in Britain after seeing his portrait of ‘Mlle Thadée C. Jacquet’ (1892) and the colorful lithograph ‘Beneath the Flowers’ (1897).
Pierre Bonnard had a huge influence on his later work. Edmond was a regular exhibitor and jury member at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He exhibited at the Salons de la Rose+Croix in 1892 and 1893. Later, he became a well-known teacher in his own right, with Theodor Pallady, Nicolae Tonitza, and Charles Sydney Hopkinson among his students. In 1893, he created a new fashion trend in Paris by painting his wife with her hair falling on the sides of her face.
Aman-Jean loved to paint women in pastels, using a manner of deep undulant brush strokes to paint them repeatedly in pinks, reds, and violets. Eight panels for the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (1910) and four Elements for the chemical amphitheater at the Sorbonne are among his most appealing works (1912).
Estimated Net Worth
Estimated net worth of Edmond Aman-Jean is unknown.