Armand Seguin 1869-1904

Armand Seguin was the son of Charlotte Elmore and Armand Félix Abel Seguin (1799–1873), and one of the grandsons of Armand Jean François Segouin, known as Seguin (1767–1835), a chemist, physician, businessman, banker to Bonaparte, and wealthy owner of Île Seguin.

Seguin studied painting at the Académie Julian and exhibited for the first time in 1893 at the Salon des Indépendants, then at Le Barc de Bouteville in Paris in 1895. Initially influenced by Impressionism, he became a disciple of Paul Gauguin, a friend of Henry de Groux, and was closely associated with the painters of the Pont-Aven School. He participated in the creation and early events of the Nabi movement.

Little is known of his life, studies, or output before his arrival in Brittany. He visited the Café Volpini exhibition in 1889. For a time, he maintained a studio at 54 rue Lepic in Paris (the same address where Vincent van Gogh had worked several years earlier). Strongly influenced, he sought to join Gauguin and his circle. From April 1891, he stayed in Pont-Aven, and in 1893–1894 he was in Le Pouldu in Clohars-Carnoët (Finistère), where he introduced Paul Gauguin and Roderic O’Conor to etching and aquatint techniques, before returning to Pont-Aven.

Due to financial constraints, he had to produce commercial prints and primarily worked as an illustrator for Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire, Manfred, a play by Lord Byron, and, in 1900, Gaspard de la Nuit by Aloysius Bertrand. He also produced numerous prints. His work was influenced by Émile Bernard and Japanese prints. Alongside Roderic O’Conor, Seguin was the most original engraver in Gauguin’s circle, and his graphic work far exceeded his painting, much to his chagrin, as he had hoped to be recognized primarily as a painter:

“Every day, every night, I dream of canvases I cannot execute, and all my desires and all my strength are devoted to achieving it.”

Between 1900 and 1902, he settled in Châteaulin, working on illustrations commissioned by Ambroise Vollard.

Seguin is generally considered the chronicler of the “Pont-Aven group.” In 1903, he wrote three articles on the formation and goals of the group in the journal L’Occident, edited by Maurice Denis. However, lacking a publisher, he could not release the full manuscript, and part of it has been lost. The published fragment remains a rare and authentic testimony on the Pont-Aven School.

“Seguin died at the age of thirty-four. Frail, tubercular, and always in poverty, his life was a perpetual struggle against adversity.” He passed away in Châteauneuf-du-Faou in the studio of his friend Paul Sérusier, where he was being cared for while ill with tuberculosis.