Charles Garabed Atamian

Biography of Charles Garabed Atamian ( 1872-1947 )

Born to an Armenian family in 1872, young Charles Atamian joined the French Lycée Saint-Benoît in Istanbul in 1880. He then carried on high-school studies in Venice, where he qualified in the teaching of drawing, painting and calligraphy.
In 1892, he entered the Venice Fine Arts Academy. Two years later, he decided to go back to Constantinople and became the official painter of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

In 1897, he settled definitely in Paris, in a studio in the Villa des Arts. After 1910, he started painting portraits of renowned people and, from 1913 to 1942, he exhibited regularly at the Salon des Beaux-Arts and, from 1938 to 1945, at the Salon des Indépendants.

In 1923, he discovered the seashore of Vendée. Seduced and inspired by the seascape, he would produce about 200 paintings, mainly children on the beach. He is considered as a painter of life and light, and an acute observer of the human moods and gesture.

In 1992, he was named Honour citizen of the city of Saint-Gilles-Croix de Vie, in Vendée, with a street bearing his name. In 1995, his grand-daughter donated 42 paintings to the same town.