EDMOND FRANÇOIS AMAN-JEAN La Rieuse: Madame Albert Besnard.
Color lithograph, 1897. 425x345 mm; 16 3/4x13 1/2 inches, full margins. Signed and numbered 61/90 in pencil, lower margin. A very good impression of this scarce lithograph.
Aman-Jean's (1860-1936) of his friend and fellow artist, Albert Besnard's (1849-1934) wife, the sculptor Charlotte Dubray (1854-1931). She was an avid and well-known artist in her own right, between 1869 and 1912 she exhibited at 37 Salons in 44 years, though she predominantly focused on advancing her husband's career and caring for their four children. Dubray became interested in the teaching art, and achieved a reform in the way that drawing was taught, abandoning the linear method in favor of freer and more spontaneous processes. In 1908 she organized an exhibition of women painters in Paris in the salons of the Lyceum. Following a journey to India, she wrote in Femina in 1911 about the condition of women in Egypt and India. From 1913 to 1921 Besnard was Director of the French Academy in Rome, and Dubray acted as a mentor and chaperone to the female students at the Villa Medici.
