Edgar Chahine - Portret van Henry Gerbault

Painter, printmaker, and illustrator Edgar Chahine was born in Austria in 1874, the son of Armenian parents. His family relocated to Constantinople when Edgar was very young, and at age eighteen he began his art studies with the financial support of his father, who was director of the Ottoman Bank. Hoping to gain more exposure to an active art society, he first traveled to Italy, enrolling at the prestigious Armenium Lyceum Moorat Raphael in Venice and the renowned Academia di Belle Arti, where he studied under Antonio Ermolao Paoletti. In 1895 he moved to Paris, taking courses at the Académie Julian under Benjamin Constant and Jean-Paul Laurens. He soon saw success exhibting at the Societe des Artistes Francais.