Provenance
Private Collection, Belgium;
Private Collection, United Kingdom
Biography
Edmond François Aman-Jean (1858 – 1936) was born in 1858 at Seine-et-Marne department of France. He had his first art lessons with Henri Lehmann at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he shared a workshop with Georges Seurat the eminent Pointillist painter. He also befriended the Symbolist painters, Alphonse Osbert and Alexandre Séon.
In 1886, he obtained a travelling scholarship and went to Italy, together with Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin and Ernest Laurent; studying the Old Masters. In 1892, he painted a portrait of the poet, Paul Verlaine, during his convalescence for syphilis at the Hôpital Broussais in the 14th arrondissement of Paris. Verlaine dedicated a sonnet to him and they remained good friends until Verlaine’s death in 1896.
Aman-Jean was also one of the first to recognize Joséphin Péladan as an important artist and exhibited at one of the first showings held at the Salon de la Rose + Croix. Later, he became an important teacher in his own right; his students included Charles Sydney Hopkinson, Theodor Pallady, and Nicolae Tonitza. In 1923, together with Albert Besnard and Auguste Rodin, he helped create the Salon des Tuileries. Ten years later, he was named a Commander in the Legion of Honour.
In 1892, he married Thadée Jacquet, the daughter of an Imperial Prefect, who was also a painter. They had two children, François, who became a well-known writer, and Céline.
