Aman-Jean (Portrait of Edmond François Aman-Jean)1882–83
Seurat’s friend and fellow student Edmond Aman-Jean sits in profile, his features emerging from velvety darkness. More about this work
About this work
Seurat’s friend and fellow student Edmond Aman-Jean sits in profile, his features emerging from velvety darkness. Seurat made the drawing in Conté crayon on Michallet paper, whose ridged texture breaks the black into a fine, shimmering grain, and it was accepted at the Paris Salon of 1883, the first time he showed a work in public. The two had trained together at the École des Beaux-Arts. Without a single hard outline, the portrait achieves a quiet monumentality.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Georges Seurat
French, 1859–1891 · Born and died in Paris.
Seurat trained at the École des Beaux-Arts and studied the colour theories of Chevreul and others before developing pointillism, building pictures from small, separate touches of pure colour meant to combine in the eye. His large compositions, planned through many drawings and oil sketches, include Bathers at Asnières and A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884, shown at the last Impressionist exhibition in 1886. His black conté crayon drawings are equally distinctive. He died suddenly at thirty-one.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Post-Impressionism
Artists who kept Impressionism's colour but pushed towards structure, symbol and feeling.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Met has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 61.101.16
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Drawings
- Department
- Drawings and Prints
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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