Théodore Chassériau

Théodore Chassériau (; ; September 20, 1819 – October 8, 1856) was a Dominican-born French Romantic painter noted for his portraits, historical and religious paintings, allegorical murals, and Orientalist images inspired by his travels to Algeria. Early in his career he painted in a Neoclassical style close to that of his teacher Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, but in his later works he was strongly influenced by the Romantic style of Eugène Delacroix. He was a prolific draftsman, and made a suite of prints to illustrate Shakespeare's Othello. The portrait he painted at the age of 15 of Prosper Marilhat makes Chassériau the youngest painter exhibited at the Louvre museum.

Life and work

Chassériau was born in El Limón, Samaná, in the Spanish colony of Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic). His father Benoît Chassériau was a French adventurer who had arrived in Santo Domingo in 1802 to take an administrative position in what was until 1808 a French colony. Theodore's mother, Marie Madeleine Couret de la Blagnière, was the daughter of a mulatto landowner born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti). In December 1820 the family left Santo Domingo for Paris, where the young Chassériau soon showed precocious drawing skill. He was accepted into the studio of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in 1830, at the age of eleven, and became the favorite pupil of the great classicist, who regarded him as his truest disciple. (An account that may be apocryphal has Ingres declaring "Come, gentlemen, come see, this child will be the Napoleon of painting.")

After Ingres left Paris in 1834 to become director of the French Academy in Rome, Chassériau fell under the influence of Eugène Delacroix, whose brand of painterly colorism was anathema to Ingres. Chassériau first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1836, and was awarded a third-place medal in the category of history painting. In 1840 Chassériau travelled to Rome and met with Ingres, whose bitterness at the direction his student's work was taking led to a decisive break. While in Italy, Chassériau made landscape sketches and studied Renaissance frescoes.

Macbeth and the Three Witches 1855. An example of one of Chassériau's many works inspired by Shakespeare

Among the chief works of his early maturity are Susanna and the Elders and Venus Anadyomene (both 1839), Diana Surprised by Actaeon (1840), Andromeda Chained to the Rock by the Nereids (1840), and The Toilette of Esther (1841), all of which reveal a very personal ideal in depicting the female nude. Chassériau's major religious paintings from these years, Christ in the Garden of Olives (a subject he treated in 1840 and again in 1844) and The Descent from the Cross (1842), received mixed reviews from the critics; among the artist's champions was Théophile Gautier. In 1843, Chassériau painted murals depicting the life of Saint Mary of Egypt in the Church of Saint-Merri in Paris, the first of several commissions he received to decorate public buildings in Paris. He also created a body of 29 prints, including a group of eighteen etchings of subjects from Shakespeare's Othello in 1844.

He exhibited the colossal portrait Ali-Ben-Hamet, Caliph of Constantine and Chief of the Haractas, Followed by his Escort in the Salon of 1845, where it received equivocal reviews. In 1846, Chassériau made his first trip to Algeria. From sketches made on this and subsequent trips he painted such subjects as Arab Chiefs Visiting Their Vassals and Jewish Women on a Balcony (both 1849, now in the Louvre). A major late work, The Tepidarium (1853, in the Musée d'Orsay), depicts a large group of women drying themselves after bathing, in an architectural setting inspired by the artist's trip in 1840 to Pompeii. His most monumental work was his decoration of the grand staircase of the Cour des Comptes, commissioned by the state in 1844 and completed in 1848. He followed the example of Delacroix in executing this work in oil on plaster, rather than in fresco. In composing his narrative paintings, his concern for the decorative arrangement of figures and the creation of a mood took precedence over narrative coherence. His preferred method of working was to study his model carefully and then draw from memory.

Legacy His work had a significant impact on the style of Puvis de Chavannes and Gustave Moreau, and—through those artists' influence—reverberations in the work of Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse. There is in Paris a Society for the painter: Association des Amis de Théodore Chassériau.

Works of Chassériau are in the Musée du Louvre where a room is dedicated to him, in the Musée d'Orsay, and in the Musée de Versailles. Collections in the United States holding works by Théodore Chassériau include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Fogg Art Museum of Harvard University, the National Gallery of Art of Washington, D.C., the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Museum of the Art Rhode Island School of Design, The J. Paul Getty Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Exhibitions Théodore Chassériau: Parfum exotique, National Museum of Western Art of Tokyo, Japan, February 28 – May 28, 2017 Théodore Chassériau: Obras sobre papel, Galerie nationale des beaux-arts de Santo Domingo and Centro cultural León de Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, 2004 Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856): A Different Romanticism, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (titled Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856): The Unknown Romantic), Galeries nationales du Grand Palais in Paris (France) and Musée des beaux-arts de Strasbourg (France), 2002 Chassériau (1819–1856): exposition au profit de la Société des amis du Louvre, Galerie Daber, Paris, France, 1976 Theodore Chassériau (1819–1856), Musée des beaux-arts de Poitiers, France, 1969 Théodore Chassériau, Musée national des beaux-arts d'Alger, Algeria, 1936 Retrospective Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856), Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, France, 1933 Aquarelles et dessins de Chasseriau (1819–1856), Galerie L. Dru, Paris, France, 1927 Les Peintres orientalistes français - 4e exposition: Rétrospective Théodore Chassériau, Galerie Durand-Ruel, Paris, France, 1897

Selected works Self-Portrait - Musée du Louvre Aline Chassériau - Musée du Louvre Battle of Arab Horsemen Around a Standard (1854) - Dallas Museum of Art The Caliph of Constantine, also known as Ali Ben-Hamet, Caliph of Constantine and Chief of the Haractas, Followed by his Escort Arab Chiefs Challenging each other to Single Combat under the Ramparts of a City Andromeda Chained to the Rock by the Nereids Arab Chiefs Visiting their Vassals Christ in the Garden of Olives The Descent from the Cross Diana Surprised by Actaeon Jewish Women on a Balcony Othello and Desdemona in Venice Portrait of the Father Dominique Lacordaire, of the Order of the Predicant Friars Susanna and the Elders Venus Anadyomene The Tepidarium The Toilette of Esther The Two Sisters

Gallery