Ary Scheffer

Biography

He was the son of Johann Bernhard Scheffer which was perhaps during a year painter at the court of king de Hollande Louis Napoleon. Two years after the early death of his/her father, in 1811, Ary was taken along to Paris and was placed in the workshop of Guerin by his mother, an energetic woman and of great character. The moment when Scheffer left Guerin coincides with the beginning of the romantic movement. It felt little sympathy to the direction which had given him its most famous representatives, Sigalon, Delacroix or Géricault; its career started in 1819 with the exposure to the Living room of “patriotic Devotion of six middle-class men of Calais” after which it tried various experiments: “Gaston de Foix” (1824), “the Women souliotes” (1827) before finding its own way. The style of Scheffer was described as “cold classicism”

Immediately after the exposure of the Women souliotes it turned to Byron and Goethe, choosing in Faust long series of the subjects which enjoyed an extraordinary vogue. Among them, we can mention “Marguerite with the Wheel”; “Faust tormented by the Doubt”; “Marguerite with the Sabbath”; “Marguerite with the church”; “The Walk with the Garden”; and finally, perhaps most popular of all, “Marguerite with the Well”. Two the “Nice ones” appeared in 1836; and “Francesca da Rimini”, which is the best work of Scheffer, belongs to the same period.

It turned then to the religious subjects: “Consolateur Christ” (1836) was followed of “Christ Remunerative”, of the “Shepherds led by Star” (1837), of the “Magi depositing their Crowns”, of “Christ to the Garden of the Olive-trees”, of “Christ carrying her Cross”, of the “Christ put at the tomb” (1845), of “Saint Augustin and Monique” (1846), after which it ceased exposing. Its close links with the royal family explain why her favor fell with, in 1848, the introduction of the Second Republic. Recluse in his workshop, it continued to produce much, but the public could see it only after its death, which took place in Argenteuil on June 15th, 1858.

Frederic very young Auguste Bartholdi, will be one of its last pupils of its workshop of the street Chaptal.

Scheffer was also an achieved portraitist, one finds among his subjects the type-setters Chopin and Liszt.

In the posthumous exposure of its work “Concerns of the Earth” and “Angel announcing appeared the Resurrection”, which it had left unfinished. Among its many portraits those of Fayette, of Béranger, Lamartine and the queen Marie-Amélie are most remarkable. This posthumous exposure hardly helped its reputation, which thereafter was still shaken by the sale of the Paturle Gallery, which contained many of its most praised works; the charm and the facility of their composition could not save them judgment which caused their ground-with-ground and insipid poverty their feelings.

Scheffer, which had married the widow of Baudrand General, was made commander of the Legion of Honor only in 1848, i.e. to be itself completely withdrawn of the Living room. His/her Henry brother, born with $the Hague on September 27th, 1798, was him also a fertile painter, his great nephew Ary Renan 1858-1900 was a painter of the school Symbolist.

Four years after his death one set up to him in Dordrecht a statue on the place of the Stock Exchange (today Scheffer place); a street of Paris also bears its name. In 1995, at the time of its two hundredth birthday, the museum of Dordrecht, which has a great number of its tables, devoted an exposure to him. The sculptrice Cornelia Scheffer is his/her daughter.

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