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Ary Scheffer was born in Dordrecht, to a German father and Dutch mother. After his father’s death the family moved to Paris in 1809. He exhibited at the Salon from 1812. His early work was Neoclassical in style but by 1814 he had introduced colour and drama into his work. He was highly popular in Paris during the 1830s for his sentimental merging of a highly finished technique and Romantic subject-matter. He worked in a range of genres from portraiture to exotic and literary themes. He was a supporter of Greek independence, an enthusiast for English and German literature and could be seen as representing the acceptable face of Romanticism. Scheffer was also an accomplished portrait painter, finishing 500 portraits in total. His subjects included composers Frédéric Chopin and Franz Liszt, the Marquis de la Fayette, Pierre-Jean de Béranger, Alphonse de Lamartine, Charles Dickens, Duchess de Broglie, Talleyrand and Queen Marie Amélie. |
