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She was born to an unwed mother and did not become “legitimized” until her stepfather adopted her in 1874. Four years later, she became an orphan and at the age of 18 married illustrator Edouard Jacquemin. They were a bohemian couple, and she became an artist while he worked at the Musee d’histoire naturelle. |
Jacquemin first exhibited in 1892 at Le Barc at Bouteville and unveiled her Symbolistic works to a harsh crowd. Her critics deemed her work to be too decadent, morbid and even narcissistic. By this time, she was living with a friend of the painter Puvis de Chavannes, and later worked at La Salpêtrière. She married Lucien Pautrier, a physician in 1902, whom she later divorced.
Jacquemin married again in 1921 to Sedir, a mystic and famous occult leader.
Most of Jacquemin’s paintings can easily be identified by the sad figures which haunt her canvases. These paintings likely mirrored the anguish Jacquemin felt inside, and usually featured waif-like or gaunt women in dreamlike states or deep in anguished thought. It was typical of Jacquemin to use lighter mediums such as pastels in her dream-like compositions and darker colors in her darker themed pieces, such as in the lithograph “Coup de Suavite.”
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