Theodor Aman

Biography

The Sultan, if the critic Oscar Cisek is to be believed, admired the panorama “The Battle of Oltenița” in Constantinople himself and offered twenty thousand lei for it, together with the Order of the Medjidie. A lithograph of the painting, issued through the firm of Goupil, survives in the Aman Museum with his inscription stating that the original belongs to the Sultan.

Aman was born on 20 March 1831 in Câmpulung, where his parents, who came from Craiova, had taken refuge for a time from the plague and the presence of Russian troops. His father was a wealthy merchant of Macedonian-Romanian and Armenian roots, nicknamed Aman; his mother was a Greek woman born in Paris. He learned to draw in Craiova under Constantin Lecca, then at Saint Sava College in Bucharest under Carol Wallenstein. In 1850 he went to Paris and studied with Michel Martin Drolling, and after Drolling’s death with François-Édouard Picot. There he found himself among Romanian revolutionaries and became friends with Nicolae Bălcescu and with the poets Dimitrie Bolintineanu and Cezar Bolliac. Under the influence of this circle and of Bolintineanu’s verse he painted a picture of the last night of Michael the Brave. In 1853 Aman showed work at the Paris Salon for the first time; it was a self-portrait. Then he travelled to Constantinople and to the Crimea, visited Sevastopol during the Crimean War and gathered material for paintings on subjects from Romanian history. “The Battle of Alma” was shown at the Exposition Universelle of 1855. In 1857 he returned to Bucharest. Prince Barbu Știrbei raised him to the rank of boyar (the year is also given as 1856) and granted him a scholarship for a new trip to Paris. There Aman was strongly influenced by the Barbizon school, which can be seen in his landscapes and portraits. After a short stay in Rome he came back to Bucharest again.

The conservative local society, barely weaned from Phanariot customs, saw in him something close to a revolution, while he carried himself as a lord of the arts, without giving up his fortune or his boyar title.

In October 1864 (decree no. 1272 of 5 October) Aman and Gheorghe Tattarescu founded the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest; Prince Alexandru Ioan Cuza responded to their request. Aman became its first director and remained so to the end of his life. From 1865 he was the initiator of the exhibitions “Artists in Their Lifetime”, which were later repeated in Bucharest.

In 1865 he married Ana Politimos. On the plot she brought as her dowry, a building contractor named Scheller built, to his instructions, a house with a large studio in the Pompeian style; the contract was signed on 25 February 1868, and construction continued until October 1869. All of fashionable Bucharest gathered in the studio, and I think that for Romanian art of the time it was almost the only real centre of attraction. Later he worked in printmaking, and in 1889 and 1890 he exhibited at the New Museum, where he showed still lifes and small portraits.

Aman died on 19 August 1891 in Bucharest and was buried in Bellu Cemetery. He was posthumously made a member of the Romanian Academy. His widow pressed for the fulfilment of his last wish to open a museum: in 1904 the state bought the house and the collection, granting her a lifetime pension, and on 16 June 1908 the Theodor Aman Museum opened. His grandson Horațiu Dimitriu also became an artist.