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Edouard Jean Conrad Hamman spent his youth in Ostend, where his father was city treasurer and secretary of the Chamber of Commerce. As a child he received drawing lessons at the Ostend School for Drawing and Architecture. He then attended the Antwerp Academy for a number of years, was a pupil of the history and portrait painter Nicaise de Keyser and received advice from the genre painter Hendrik Leys. Hamman made his debut at the Ghent Salon of 1838. In 1846 he moved to Paris to continue his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts.
During his trip to Italy in 1849, Hamman spent a large part of his time copying the work of the great Renaissance masters such as Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese. The influence of these painters can be seen in the use of colour and the treatment of light and shadow in Hamman's work. His big breakthrough came after he devoted himself to depicting events from the lives of celebrities such as Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Christopher Columbus and many other artists and scholars. He also used literary themes, often based on Shakespeare. Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie of France were fond of his work and the portrait he made of King Norodom of Cambodia earned him a Royal distinction.
Hamman's life was that of an established, successful and wealthy bourgeois artist, awarded many medals in the important Paris Salons and held in high esteem by the French elite.
