Théodore Hannon

Théodore (Théo) Hannon (1851-1916) was a Belgian painter, watercolorist, engraver, and man of letters. As a man of letters, he was a scenarist, theatrical-parodist, and poet.

As a poet he enjoyed the rare honor of being mentioned in glowing terms—along with French contemporaries Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Flaubert, Stéphane Mallarmé, Tristan Corbière, and Paul Verlaine—by Des Esseintes in Joris-Karl Huysmans' famous decadent novel, À rebours

Family

Born October 1, 1851, at Ixelles, Belgium, and died April 7, 1916, at Etterbeek, Belgium, Théodore was the second of three siblings. His father, Joseph-Désiré Hannon (1822-1870), was a doctor of medicine and a professor of natural sciences (botany, zoology) at the Free University of Brussels. His brother, Édouard Hannon (1853-1931), was an engineer by profession and a pioneer of Belgian artistic photography. His sister, Mariette Rousseau (1850-1926), née Marie-Sophie Hannon, was a respected mycologist.

Biography

Hammond first followed in the footsteps of his deceased father, by enrolling in a study of the sciences (1870-1871) and then medicine (1871-1873) at the Free University of Brussels. But before he graduated, he pivoted away from medicine toward the fine arts. He re-enrolled at the Académie royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles (Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels), and took Camille van Camp as his master. He became a member of the Société Libre des Beaux-Arts and then in 1875, together with several other artists including Alfred Verhaeren, Louis Artan, Félicien Rops and Périclès Pantazis, became a founding member of a new, anti-conformist group: La Chrysalide. At this same time, he rejoined the International Society of Watercolorists, founded by Rops in 1869. Rops and Hannon exchanged a lot of letters from 1875 until the death of Rops in 1898. Their letters shows that the two artists were great friends, and talked about their work as well as their private life. Rops also conceived and realized illustrations and etchings for several of Théodore Hannon's works.