FREEDOM! Ary Scheffer in French Romanticism

LIBERTÉ! Ary Scheffer & French Romanticism is now on view at the Dordrechts Museum until March 23, 2025. This exhibition takes you back to turbulent Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century, a time full of political unrest and cultural flourishing. Artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, and Dominique Ingres used their brushes as weapons or took to the barricades. So too did Ary Scheffer (1795–1858), originally from Dordrecht, who quickly became one of the most famous painters of the French capital. Hurry, because you will never see these artworks in this context again.

FREEDOM! Ary Scheffer in French Romanticism

LIBERTÉ! Ary Scheffer & French Romanticism is currently on view at the Dordrechts Museum until March 23, 2025. This exhibition takes you back to turbulent Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century, a time full of political unrest and cultural flourishing. Artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault en Dominique Ingres  turned their brushes into weapons or climbed the barricades. So did those from Dordrecht. Ary Scheffer (1795-1858), who soon became one of the most famous painters of the French capital. With Delacroix and Géricault at his side, Scheffer fought for liberty and equality; the ideals of the French Revolution of 1789. It was the era of the collective versus the individual. Of individual freedom and expression. This romantic ideology lives on to this day in many respects. Themes that are relevant again today, such as the power of the citizen, the force of activism, and the yearning for national autonomy, first resonated in meter-sized paintings during the French Romantic period. In addition, literature, music, religion, and nature were also important sources of inspiration for Romantics. This translates into paintings featuring beautiful depictions of literary stories, landscapes, and remarkable religious pieces. In addition to an impressive number of paintings by Scheffer (the Dordrechts Museum possesses the largest number worldwide), famous artworks from the Palace of Versailles and the Louvre are also on display in the Netherlands for the first time during LIBERTÉ! Géricault's oil sketch of the world-famous Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's Episode from the Greek War of Independence can also be admired in our country for the first time during the exhibition.  

Eugène Delacroix

Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) is regarded as the most important French painter of Romanticism. Other important representatives of French Romanticism were his contemporary and close friend Charles-Émile-Callande de Champmartin and the young Théodore Géricault, who died prematurely. He is also referred to as a “literary painter” (by Baudelaire, among others), because he often drew his themes from writers such as Shakespeare (Hamlet et Horatio au cimetière) and Dante (Barque de Dante). Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple) is a painting by the French painter Eugène Delacroix. It depicts liberty as Marianne, the national symbol of France, leading the revolutionaries during the July Revolution of 1830. It is painted in oil. The canvas measures 260 by 325 centimeters.

This is one of the most famous and imitated paintings in the history of French painting. The scene depicts the well-known allegory of liberty: the woman (referencing older methods of allegory representation) with a bare torso (nudity as a sign of vulnerability—and thus courage—in contrast to the horrific events unfolding). The woman wears a Phrygian cap, which symbolizes freedom. To her right, a young boy, representing youth, fearlessly holds two pistols. Of the man to her left, who is looking doubtfully into the distance, it is sometimes said that it could be a self-portrait of Delacroix, although this is not certain. Striking features of this painting are the classical composition with a central triangle and the contemporary subject matter, whereas many Romantics often looked back to the past. This painting demonstrates that the three classes (clergy, nobility, and bourgeoisie) were in favor of the revolution, as the three estates are present alongside the woman. All estates are therefore resisting the established order. The flag the woman is holding is also not just any French flag. It was the new flag with three colors representing liberty, equality, and fraternity. The previous symbol of France was the French Lily. The British band Coldplay used the painting as the front cover of the CD of their album Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (2008).  

Theodore Gericault

Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) was a French painter of the nineteenth-century Romantic movement. Géricault was taught painting by Carle Vernet and Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. His early work reveals influences from Peter Paul Rubens and an interest in depicting emotion. When he traveled to Florence and Rome in 1816–17, he became fascinated by both Michelangelo and the Baroque. His most famous work is Le raduse de la Méduse (The Raft of the Medusa, 1819). The Medusa was a ship that sank off the coast of Mauritania in 1816 while en route to Gorée. 147 shipwrecked survivors drifted for thirteen days before they were found. The painting depicts the raft and the surviving survivors (and their condition) at the moment it was discovered. At the Salon in Paris, the painting was received as a scandal. Géricault studied corpses and the sick, interviewed the survivors, and had the raft reconstructed in order to paint it as realistically as possible, albeit with the addition of romantic theatricality. In the painting, we find two triangles: the one with the sail and, on the other, the hopefully waving man on the right. Furthermore, there are two contrasting elements: the deceased (sick) man on the left and the hopeful, lively man waving a cloth on the right. The dark colors juxtaposed with the lighter ones also convey an atmosphere of unrest. The painting symbolizes the people achieving their own salvation, rather than the passive, reactionary regime following the French Revolution. It could be interpreted as the artist drifting on the endless sea of ​​his emotions, which fits the atmosphere of Romantic artists. The work represents a step from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. Partly due to the loaded theme, the painting proved less successful in France than in England, where it gained acclaim around 1820. Upon his return to France, this inspired him to paint portraits of the insane, each with their own disorder. A well-known example is the Portrait of a Kleptomaniac, which is on display at the Ghent Museum of Fine Arts. In 1824, after a long period of suffering, weakened by accidents and chronic tuberculosis, Géricault died at the age of 32.  

Dominique Ingres

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) was a French painter. Ingres was admitted to the exclusive Order Pour le Mérite. Ingres received his first lessons in painting from his father, Joseph Ingres, who was a sculptor. In 1791, he went to the Academy in Toulouse and in 1797 became a pupil of Jacques-Louis David in Paris. In 1799, he was accepted at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1801, he won the Prix de Rome with the neoclassical work *Achilles Receiving the Emissaries of Agamemnon*. However, there was no money, and Ingres was only able to leave for Italy in 1806. Meanwhile, he began drawing and painting portraits in a manner that differed significantly from that of his teacher, David. In his portraits, Ingres aimed for a dignified posture and a realistic depiction of clothing. He focused particularly on female beauty. In Paris, his work received sharp criticism. The sharply defined, precise painting style, in which the brushstrokes were invisible and the paint displayed a flat technique, was labeled 'Gothic'. Nevertheless, Ingres upheld the dignity of Neoclassicism in France during the first half of the 19th century. He did, however, work in a style entirely his own, imbued with romantic fantasies. The poses and settings vary from canvas to canvas. All the works exude the same voluptuous, erotic sensuality, which is expressed through extremely refined lines and often in bright, vivid colors. The ladies in his works often wear gold chains that accentuate their lush, full shoulders and arms. Compared to later portrait painters, it is striking that in Ingres's work there is remarkably little distance between the sitter and the artist. Ingres chose a line style that, through its absolute fidelity to nature, clearly indicated the form of the object. It was believed that the Greeks had done the same, and engravings of Pompeii and Herculaneum are said to have reinforced this idea. But Ingres's line style went beyond the normal neoclassical drawing by also conveying sensory perception in a highly refined form. He achieved the latter through color, among other things, although for him color always remained subordinate to the linework. He meticulously studied the work of the Renaissance painter Raphael from 1806, when he stayed in Italy for a long time. Here he also painted the theme that he would paint frequently: bathers seen from the back. Particularly well-known are La Grande Odalisque (1814) and one of his last works: The Turkish Bath (1862).  

Ary Scheffer

Scheffer was born as the son of Johan Bernard Scheffer (1773–1809), born in Homburg, who was also a professional painter. His mother was Cornelia Lamme (1769–1839), a miniature painter and from a family of artists. In 1797, the family moved to The Hague. Later, they moved to Amsterdam, where father Scheffer served as court painter to King Louis Napoleon for one year. After the latter's death, the family moved to Brussels. Scheffer's mother moved to Paris two years later (in 1811).

In Paris, Scheffer became friends with Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault. Together with them, he was part of the group of artists who were socially and politically engaged (nationally and internationally) and wholeheartedly supported the July Revolution of 1830. In the years that followed, his success and fame grew. He also prospered financially and had high-ranking and famous friends, including the Marquis de Lafayette and George Sand. In addition, his circle of friends included the composers Franz Liszt, Charles Gounod, and Frédéric Chopin; he painted three portraits of the latter. In Paris, he had a daughter, Cornelia Scheffer, in 1830. Due to his close ties with the royal house of the July Monarchy, he ran into difficulties during the Second Republic in 1848. In 1850, he became a naturalized Frenchman. His brother, Henry Scheffer, was likewise an established painter in Paris, affiliated with the House of King Louis-Philippe.

He painted many portraits and typical Romantic motifs such as political revolutions (Greece, Poland) and literature (Goethe, Byron, Shakespeare, Dante…), but after 1840 he increasingly took up religious subjects. He continued painting until his death, although he fell out of fashion in the Parisian art world after 1848, when Realism made its entrance. Scheffer died at the age of 63. He was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in Paris, where his tomb monument can still be visited.

Four years after his death, at the Stock Exchange in Dordrecht (subsequently: Scheffersplein) a statue was unveiled for him, created by Joseph Mezzara based on the design of Ary's daughter Cornelia. A street in Paris is named after him. The Dordrechts Museum, which dedicated a jubilee exhibition to Scheffer in 1995, holds a large number of paintings by his hand. In Paris, Ary Scheffer lived at 16 Rue Chaptal, where the Musée de la Vie romantique is now located. In the museum, the entire first floor is dedicated to his life and works (the ground floor to George Sand).  

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LIBERTE! Ary Scheffer & French Romanticism, through March 23, 2025: https://www.dordrechtsmuseum.nl/nu-te-zien-en-te-doen/libert%C3%A9/ Previous museum blogs: https://www.postzegelblog.nl/tag/made-in-holland/