Aumonier, R.I., James 1832 - 1911

Biography

Born in London, grandson of Jean and son of Henry, a jeweller from Camberwell of French Huguenot descent, Aumonier was known as a landscape painter and textile designer. The surname was probably a pseudonym assumed by grandfather Jean. He studied at evening classes at the Birkbeck Institution and at the Royal College of Art. He designed patterns for calico printing, but gave this up after 1873, having begun landscape painting in his spare time. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1871 - 1907, and was encouraged by W.L. Wyllie and Lionel Smythe. He held an exhibition of his watercolours at the Leicester Galleries 1908, and his work was included at the Goupil Gallery in 1908, and reviewed in The New Age, Volume 2, p. 58. His paintings included landscape scenes of Cornwall, Dorset, Sussex, Oxfordshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Wales and Montreuil. He never left England until 1891 when he visited Venice and the Venetian Alps. He was elected member of the Royal Institute of Painters in water-colours in 1876, and was one of the original members of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters 1883. Elected to the New Watercolour Society in 1879 and the N.E.A.C. in 1887. In 1889 he was awarded a gold medal for water colour in Paris, and a bronze model for oil painting at Adelaide. He also received a silver medal at the Brussels exhibition of 1897. A Memorial Exhibition was held at the Goupil Gallery in 1912.

Aumonier died on 4 Oct 1911 in London, and his remains were cremated at Woking. . He married Amelia Wright in 1863, and had four children, Nancy, Frank, Jack and Louise. A sketch portrait in oils by James Charles (1851-1906) was executed in 1900.

For a while, James Aumonier lived at Fellows Road (Camden, London NW3) where he made a partnership with painter-etcher Alfred Bayes to buy land on which they built twin houses. He is recalled by Alfred's daughter Jessie. Jessie describes Aumonier's large oil landscapes as "stark and rather forbidding like himself", and Aumonier as "the King of Spades" amongst a circle of fellow artists including Lionel Smythe. He also lived for a time at East Harting, Petersfield, in 1884 and at Steyning, Sussex, in 1887.

Aumonier's work is briefly discussed alongside that of contemporary landscapists in a critique of Modern painting in Great Britain, first published in 1908.
We may perhaps also bring Mr. James Aumonier among the more imaginative painters, for although there is a strong element of realism in his art, the fact is largely impregnated with feeling. Indeed, the objects in the picture seem often the mere occasion for tones of light and colour that appeal to our emotions. He is a native of London, was self-taught in art, which, in his youth, he pursued in the leisure he could obtain from the work of designing for printed calicoes.

James' nephew, Stacy, was a landscape painter and decorative designer, who later turned to writing (crime and mystery: compared with Arthur Conan Doyle). In turn, Stacy's brother William and nephew Eric were sculptors, Eric becoming well known for, inter alia, his Archer.

Notes by Simon Jeffery, 2006 February, updated 2009 December