Hendrik Scheffer

Dutch painter

Hendrik Scheffer
Hendrik Scheffer (photo by Pierre Petit)
Born	(1798-09-25)25 September 1798 The Hague, Netherlands
Died	15 March 1862(1862-03-15) (aged 63) Paris, France
Nationality	Dutch, French
Education	Pierre-Narcisse Guérin
Known for	Painting
Movement	Romanticism

Hendrik Scheffer (The Hague, 25 September 1798 – Paris, 15 March 1862) was a Dutch painter in the Romantic tradition who lived in France for most of his life. In France he is usually known as Henri Scheffer.

Personal life

Scheffer was the younger brother of painter Ary Scheffer, son of Johann Baptist and Cornelia Scheffer and grandson of Arie Lamme. When his father died in 1809, his mother first moved to Brussels and in 1811 to Paris.

His daughter Cornélie married French philosopher Ernest Renan. Their son Ary Renan also became a painter.

Work

Scheffers, like his brother Ary, was a pupil of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin.

His work was much sought after in his lifetime. He mainly painted genre pieces and portraits which were finely crafted. His work was exhibited at the Salon from 1824 onwards and was heavily criticised by Charles Baudelaire^[1] and Théophile Gautier.^[2]

Scheffers best known work is probably a picture portraying the arrest of Charlotte Corday (now in the Musée Lambinet), some selected others:

Louis-Joseph de Vendôme (now in the musée de Vendôme)
François Arago, the basis for the well known engraving by Alexandre Vincent Sixdeniers
Armand Carrel
Casimir Delavigne (now in musée national du château et des Trianons, in the Palace of Versailles)
Ernest Renan (now in the Musée de la Vie Romantique)
Augustin Thierry

Selected other works:

An Inundation in Rome
Joan of Arc entering Orléans (now in Versailles)
Hermann and Dorothea
Madame Roland
Preaching after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
The Battle of Cassel (now in Versailles)
The dream of Charles IX in the night of St. Bartholomew, based on the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre

His work has been copied many times in engravings.

The Dordrechts Museum has a section dedicated to the work of the Scheffers (mainly his brother Ary).

Students

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes studied with him for a time.

Awards

He was made a Chevalier in the Legion of Honor on 8 August 1837.^[3]

Gallery

Christ on the Mount of Olives in the church of Chalifert
Joan of Arc entering Orléans
The Battle of Cassel (1328)
Amaury VI de Montfort
Don Juan asleep on Haidée's lap, circa 1827
Blaise de Monluc, 1834 (commissioned by Louis Philippe I)
Conseil des ministres (1838)
L'arrestation de Charlotte Corday de Henri Scheffer, 1830

References

^ (in French) The 1845 Salon on the Litteratura website
^ (in French) The 1845 Salon on the Theophile Gautier website Archived 2 March 2010 at the Wayback Machine
^ (in French) Henri Scheffer in the Base Leonore

Attribution:

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1889). "Scheffer, Hendrik". In Armstrong, Sir Walter; Graves, Robert Edmund (eds.). Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (L–Z). Vol. II (3rd ed.). London: George Bell & Sons.