Story summary
Samenvatting van Aymeris
- 8 min. leestijd
- 8 parts
- Binnenkort te beluisteren
A frail Paris boy raised among elderly parents tries to become a painter and keeps losing the people he loves.
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Aymeris in het kort
Samenvatting: 8 min leestijd
- Leestijd
- Ongeveer 9 h 5 min7 h 10 min fast, 10 h 45 min slow
- Lengte
- 129.100 woorden
- Bibliotheekniveau
- Gemiddeld longer sentences, everyday words
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Aymeris in short
Aymeris follows one man from a protected Passy childhood to a restless middle age. Georges is raised by frightened, elderly parents who love him and cannot let him live. Each time he reaches for something real, he finds a barrier, often made of his own upbringing.
What Aymeris is about
What happens to a boy who is raised as if he were made of glass? At eight, Georges Aymeris loses his brother Jacques, and from that day his elderly parents, two stern aunts and a devoted nurse wrap him in wool shawls and fear.
He is moved to a pavilion at the bottom of the garden and watched for every cough. He calls the people around him the centenarians, because everyone seems to be a hundred years old. Nobody explains death to him, so he guesses.
This is Aymeris, the first book by the French painter Jacques-Émile Blanche. An unnamed artist friend tells it from Georges's notebooks and letters. You get the art world of Degas, Manet and the Salon.
Voor wie is het?. You will love this book if you enjoy artists' lives, Paris and London around 1900, sharp family portraits, and novels built from letters and diaries.
The story in 8 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
A sheltered boy grows up among old people
Georges is the youngest child of a famous Paris lawyer, Pierre Aymeris, and his wife Alice, who are first cousins. They married late, and their daughter Marie and their son Jacques have both died. Georges, pale and silent, is all they have left.
The day Jacques falls ill, he is learning to drive a carriage in the Bois de Boulogne. By evening there are doctors and a nun in the house. A week later his mother tells Georges that Jacques is with God, and Georges silently wonders what color Paradise might be.
After that, the house becomes a place of whispers. Georges wears black ribbons and is watched for every cough. He even tries to fall ill on purpose, so that he can go where Jacques went.
His aunts live for family honor and criticize everything Alice does. His nurse, Nou-Miette, smothers him with rare meat and flannel. His father hides in his work. Georges learns that love in this family comes as worry. He escapes by painting watercolors on bedsheet fabric and copying Egyptian mummies at the Louvre, the first signs of the painter he will become.
A protected childhood can leave a person unable to protect himself.
- 2Begin gratis met lezen
An English orphan becomes his first love
The Aymerises hire an Englishwoman, Miss Ellen, to cheer the house.
- 3Begin gratis met lezen
War and exile give him a wider world
In July 1870 the Aymerises send Georges to cousins in Dieppe, away from the coming war.
- 4Begin gratis met lezen
Religion, school and a broken leg
Back in Passy, Georges tries holiness.
- 5Begin gratis met lezen
Wrong teachers, and a princess who teaches him desire
Georges gives up diplomacy for art.
- 6Begin gratis met lezen
A schemer and a critic wreck his reputation
After his illness, Georges works hard and has a Salon success with a painting called The Beach at Trouville.
- 7Begin gratis met lezen
Love with Rosemary and his parents' last days
In a Montparnasse studio Georges meets Rosemary, a model, born in Hong Kong, red-haired, blunt and ugly by Paris standards.
- 8Begin gratis met lezen
Liberty becomes another cage
With his parents gone, Georges tries to live as he wishes.
Read all 8 key ideas now
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Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- Georges Aymeris A frail, observant son of a Paris lawyer who becomes a painter and cannot free himself from his family's habits.
- Alice Aymeris Georges's nervous, blunt, devoted mother, who wants her son to succeed and cannot bear to lose him.
- Pierre Aymeris Georges's father, a kindly, famous lawyer who gives away money and says too little to his son.
- Jessie Mac Farren An English orphan taken in by the family, Georges's silent first love, sent away when he is a teenager.
- Léon Maillac A cultured old family friend and collector who guides Georges toward modern art and tells him the truth about love.
- Princess Lucia Peglioso A witty, cruel society beauty who draws Georges into her circle and humiliates him.
- Rosemary A proud, red-haired model and Georges's lover, who wants respect more than rescue.
- Cynthia Merrymore An English widow who guards Georges's studio and his friendship, and refuses to marry him.
How it ends (spoiler)
The story does not close with a wedding or a triumph. After the loss of his son, Georges drops out of sight, grows a beard and travels with Cynthia from hotel to hotel, working on private studies and refusing to exhibit. His friend meets him again in Rome, where Georges talks about art, freedom and tradition with a bitter, joking calm. He is still unsure whether he belongs to the past or the future, and the book leaves him in that doubt.
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Vragen over Aymeris
What is Aymeris about?
It follows Georges Aymeris, a sheltered son of a Paris lawyer, as he grows up, falls in love, becomes a painter and travels to London and Italy. His friend tells the story from his journals and letters.
Who wrote Aymeris and when?
Jacques-Émile Blanche, a French painter and writer, planned to publish it in 1914. The outbreak of war halted the work, and he completed it after 1918. Excerpts had already appeared in French reviews.
Is Aymeris based on a true story?
It is a novel, but Blanche gave his hero his own class, education and age. Real artists such as Degas and Manet and many Paris places appear, so the setting feels like the author's own world.
Who are the centenarians in Aymeris?
It is Georges's childhood name for the old people around him, including his parents, aunts and family friends. To a small boy they seem a hundred years old, and the image comes back near the end.
What is the main message of Aymeris?
The book asks what freedom means for someone raised under tight family rules. Georges gains independence but struggles to choose a direction, and the novel shows how upbringing shapes love, work and friendship.
Verwijs naar deze uitgave
Blanche, Jacques-Émile. Aymeris. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/aymeris.
Blanche, J.-É. (2026). Aymeris. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/aymeris
Blanche, Jacques-Émile. Aymeris. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/aymeris.
@book{blanche2026aymeris,
author = {Blanche, Jacques-Émile},
title = {Aymeris},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/aymeris}
}
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