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EDMOND MARIE PETITJEAN | Mirrored Reflections
Signed E Petitjean
Oil on Canvas
46 x 66 cms, 18" x 26"
Edmond Marie Petitjean captures a tranquil, quintessentially French landscape. Petitjean’s renown as a landscapist also led his being commissioned for two important decorative projects. In 1889 he provided pictorial schemes for multiple pavilions at that year’s World Fair under the shadow of the newly unveiled Eiffel Tower, winning a silver medal for his work.
Edmond Marie Petitjean (1844 – 1925) was born in 1844 in Neufchâteau in Eastern France to a wealthy family. His father, a local lawyer, resolutely refused to allow his son to study art until he had completed his legal studies.
After he was sent to Paris to be apprenticed as a notary, he began to spend increasing time teaching himself to paint and studying works in museums; when his parents withdrew his financial support, the artist found factory work in Nancy until he was able to afford painting supplies. After initially exhibiting in Lorraine, Petitjean would make his debut at the Paris Salon in 1873, and from this point the artist would settle in Paris.
Despite what his numerous awards might suggest, Petitjean always strove to avoid becoming an institution, preferring to continually reinvent his own subtle style; his observations about his craft are enlightening:
“in my painting I have searched passionately for perfection, delicacy, tenderness of expression and tone; I feel that it might all crumble and become insipid in the Salons where, in order to fight one’s way to the top, one must be violent”
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