Aman-Jean (Portrait of Edmond François Aman-Jean)

Georges Seurat

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Seurat's study of his friend the artist Aman-Jean (1858–1936) ranks as one of the great portrait drawings of the nineteenth century. Aman-Jean and Seurat were both students at the École Municipale du Dessin and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris; they shared a studio in 1879. The drawing is not a preparatory study for a painting but a finished work. Shown in the Paris Salon of 1883, it was the first work to be exhibited by the twenty-three-year-old artist. Seurat's signature use of conté crayon on textured laid Michallet paper of high quality resulted in drawings with luminosity and tonal harmony, and the classic balanced pose of the artist in profile, focusing intently on his work, gives the image an enduring, timeless quality.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art