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The painter, pastellist, engraver and art critic Edmond Aman-Jean, pseudonym of Amand Edmond Jean, was born in Chevry-Cossigny (Seine-et-Marne) in 1858. He was a student of Henri Lehmann at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in...
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Biography of Edmond Aman-Jean
The painter, pastellist, engraver and art critic Edmond Aman-Jean, pseudonym of Amand Edmond Jean, was born in Chevry-Cossigny (Seine-et-Marne) in 1858. He was a student of Henri Lehmann at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, as well as a fellow student of Georges Seurat, with whom he shared a studio. He also made friends with symbolist painters (Alphonse Osbert, Alexandre Séon).
In 1886, Edmond Aman-Jean obtained a travel grant and went to Italy to study the Italian primitives with Henri Martin and Ernest Laurent, which reinforced his taste for the ancients and for decoration. With Seurat, he worked as an assistant in the realization of the "Sacred Wood" by Puvis de Chavannes (four compositions for the decoration of the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon).
Close to Symbolist literary circles, in 1892 he painted a portrait of Verlaine at the Broussais Hospital, a testimony to the friendship that bound the two men from the time of their meeting until the poet's death in 1896; Verlaine dedicated a sonnet to the artist for the portrait he loved, and stayed with the artist for the following years.
In 1892 and 1893, Edmond Aman-Jean exhibited at the first two Salons of the "Aesthetic Rosicrucian", an artistic movement created in 1890, close to both symbolism and fin de siècle esotericism, whose intellectual project was the return of idealism in art; it included, among others, painters such as Fernand Khnopff, Alphonse Osbert, Alexandre Séon, Henri Martin, Antoine Bourdelle, Felix Valloton, Georges Rouault, and Emile Bernard.
In the 1900s, without being part of it, Aman-Jean will be close to the group of young painters of the "Black Band", so called by the art critics because they rejected the clear harmonies of the paintings of the impressionist painters.
Paintings, drawings, pastels, his inspiration will linger on figures of dreamy women, with delicate attitudes. Intimacy will totally supplant symbolism. Aman-Jean became a member of the New Society of Painters and Sculptors at the Georges Petit Gallery, which included several intimist painters (Henri Martin, Henri Le Sidaner, Henri Duhem).
From 1902 on, Edmond Aman-Jean travelled to the United States every year for several months, achieving great success with his portraits and large-scale decorations. The artist regularly participated in international exhibitions in Pittsburgh, Munich, Ghent, Prague and Barcelona. In 1921, he exhibited in Japan, where he also gained recognition. With his success in the United States, he became, almost reluctantly, the official portraitist of the world's beauties who "saw in him an artist who knew how to pay tribute to them". Towards the end of his life, Aman-Jean adopted a freer writing style. In 1923, after the split of a group of artists from the Salon National des Beaux-Arts and in collaboration with Antoine Bourdelle and Albert Besnard, he was one of the co-founders of the Salon des Tuileries.
Edmond Aman-Jean died in 1936.
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