ARTIST: - (Europe, early 20 century) AFTER Ary Scheffer (United Kingdom, French, 1795 - 1858)
TITLE: Marguerite at the Fountain
MEDIUM: oil on canvas
CONDITION: Relined. One patch. Minor paint losses. Few faint scratches. Some craquelure. Some scattered inpaintings. Some small damages to frame.
ART SIZE: 42 x 32 inches / 106 x 81 cm
FRAME SIZE: 51 x 40 inches / 129 x 101 cm
SIGNATURE: lower right
NAME VARIANTS: Ary Sheffer
CATEGORY: old antique vintage painting for auction sale online
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SKU#: 128921
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BIOGRAPHY:
Ary Scheffer was the son of the German painter Johann-Baptist Scheffer, who had settled in Holland and married the Dordrecht artist Cornelia Lamme. Growing up in an artistic household, Ary developed his markedly confident style and painterly expression at an early age. Following the death of his father (a painter at the court of Napoleon's brother, King Louis Napoleon), Scheffer's mother travelled to Paris and enrolled her son in the studio of the painter Guerin, in August 1811. Guerin taught drawing to the children of the Duke of Orleans; following the latter's accession to the throne in 1830, Ary was appointed court painter. Scheffer exhibited his first painting at the age of 10. He quickly earned popularity with the bourgeois public, who appreciated his 'romantic' genre paintings, with their evocative titles: The Soldier's Widow, The Mariner's Family, The Sister of Charity, The Orphans at the Cemetery. Following the accession of Louis-Philippe, he was commissioned to paint many of the large pictures destined for the historical galleries at the palace of Versailles. In addition to these official commissions, he also painted a large number of private portraits. His paintings reflect the cultural events of his day (The Death of Gericault), and scenes from history or the lives of the saints, particularly the Versailles commissions: Charlemagne Subduing the Saxons (1837), or St Augustine and St Monica (1855). He also painted portraits of Dante, Goethe, Byron and Walter Scott. His highly distinctive, polished technique, bordering on grisaille, earned him a remarkable reputation with the general public. In 1810 he submitted a painting to a public exhibition in Amsterdam, and he was a regular exhibitor at the Paris Salon from 1812 until 1855. In 1816 his painting Abraham and the Three Angels won an award in Antwerp; he was awarded another medal in 1817, and made a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur in 1828 (he was promoted to Officier in 1835). In 2003, his work featured in the exhibition Lasting Attraction: Dutch Artists in Italy, 1806-1940 ( De blijvende verlokking: Nederlandse kunstenaars in Italie, 1806-1940), at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, showcasing the importance of the Italian Grand Tour for the work of Dutch artists.