HAMON, Jean Louis (1821-1874), one of the best known of French painters under the second empire, was born at Plouha on 5th May 1821. At an early age he was destined to the priesthood, and placed under the care of the brothers Lamennais, but his strong desire to become a painter finally triumphed over family opposition, and in 1840 he courageously left Plouha for Paris,—his sole resources being a pension of five hundred francs, granted him for one year only by the municipality of his native town. At Paris Hamon received valuable counsels and encouragement from Delaroche and Gleyre, and in 1848 he made his appearance at the Salon with Le tombeau du Christ (Musée de Marseille), and a decorative work, Dessus de Porte. The works which he exhibited in 1849—Une Affiche Romaine, L’Égalité au Sérail, and Perroquet jasant avec deux jeunes Filles—obtained no marked success. Hamon was therefore content to accept a place in the manufactory of Sèvres, but an enamelled casket by his hand having attracted notice at the London International Exhibition of 1851, he received a medal, and, reinspired by success, left his post to try his chances again at the Salon of 1852. La Comédie Humaine, which he then exhibited, turned the tide of his fortune, and Ma soeur n’y est pas (purchased by the emperor) obtained for its author a third class medal in 1853. At the Paris International Exhibition of 1855, when Hamon re-exhibited the casket of 1851, together with several vases and pictures of which L’Amour et son Troupeau, Ce n’est pas moi, and Une Gardeuse d’Enfants were the chief, he received a medal of the second class, and the ribbon of the legion of honour. In the following year he was absent in the East, but in 1857 he reappeared with Boutique à quatre Sous, Papillon ...enchaîné, Cantharide esclave, Dévideuses, &c., in all ten pictures; L’Amour en visite was contributed to the Salon of 1859, and Vierge de Lesbos, Tutelle, La Volière, L’Escamoteur, and La Soeur aînée were all seen in 1861. Hamon now spent some time in Italy, chiefly at Capri, whence in 1864 he sent to Paris L’Aurore and Un Jour de Fiançailles. The influence of Italy wa3 also evident in Les Muses à Pompéi, his sole contribution to the Salon of 1866, a work which enjoyed great popubrity and was re-exhibited at the International Exhibition of 1867, together with La Promenade, and six other pictures of previous years. His last work, Le triste Rivage, appeared at the Salon of 1873. It was painted at St Raphael, where Hamon had finally settled in a little h )use on the shoree of the Mediterranean, close by Alphonse Karr’s famous garden. In this house he died on the 29th of May 1874, and the contents of his studio and portfolios were dispersed at an obscure sale—thinly attended—for au almost nominal sutn. Hamon had made his own a quiet place amongst those workers who since the days of Vien and David have been trying to bring home to us something of the pictorial aspect of classic time. He had neither the power nor the learning which might have enabled him to give to that aspect any very real shape, nor was the side of human life with which he was most concerned weighty or important. He especially loved the gestures of children and their little ways,—now comic, now cunning, but always naive, and always full of charms. Dressed in classic fashion they play on the canvas of Hamon, with endless fanciful alterations, the same nursery comedies of which Ma soeur n’y est pas is one of the best examples. The painter’s very mannerisms, his pale colour, and the hazy atmosphere which pervades his often rather empty field, enhance the graceful unreality of these little creatures, who are not quite classic loves nor yet altogether human babies.
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