Theodore Chasseriau

	Theodore Chasseriau was one of the most sensual and intellectual painters of his time. A pupil and precocious disciple of Ingres, he also fell under the influence of Delacroix, and he left his mark on both the second generation of Romantic artists and their Symbolist successors. His artwork includes Orientalist and religious paintings, scenes from Antiquity, and portraits, but he is best known for his ambitious decorative compositions for the churches of Paris and for the Cour des Comptes in the Palais d'Orsay. Theodore Chassériau was born in Samaná, in Saint Domingue , which is now the Dominican Republic. His father was a French adventurer who, at the time of Theodore's birth, held an administrative position in what was then a French colony. Theodore Chassériau's mother was the daughter of a Creole landowner. The family moved to Paris in 1821, 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, becoming the favorite pupil of the great classicist, who came to regard him as his truest disciple. Chassériau stayed in Ingres' atelier for twelve years. Ingres was impressed with his pupil's talent and invited Theodore Chasseriau to Rome to further his studies. Chasseriau declined, preferring to work on his own. Ingres would greatly influence Chasseriau's work which can be seen both in the clarity of his painting and emphasis on strong outline. Chassériau exhibited at the 1836 Salon and soon proved to be an excellent portrait painter, a specialty he demonstrated in the painting of his sister, 'Adele Chassériau'.
	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's art has often been characterized as an attempt to reconcile the classicism of Ingres with the romanticism of Delacroix. He first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 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. In 1840, Theodore Chassériau painted the portrait 'Père Lacordaire', while in Rome. He used the clarity of composition that characterized Neoclassical painting, with accentuated contours, heavily drawn outlines, and strong chiaroscuro. The severity of his work is softened, however, by the psychological traits it depicts, which are more typical of Romanticism, and by the gradual influence of Delacroix, whom he admired for the richness of his colors. Interested in female nudes, Chasseriau moderated the severity of Neoclassicism to create his own style, which is obvious in 'The Chaste Susanna' (1839) and in the renowned 'La toilette d'Esther' (shown here) which was painted in 1842.
	In 1846 Chasseriau made a trip to Algeria where he became interested in orientalism and his work began to consist of orientalist scenes though he was also well respected as a portraitist. From sketches made on this and subsequent trips he painted such subjects as Arab Chiefs Visiting Their Vassals and Jewish Women on a Balcony (shown here). 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. This work was heavily damaged in May 1871 by a fire set during the Commune, and only fragments could be recovered; these are preserved in the Louvre. Throughout his life he was a prolific draftsman; his many portrait drawings executed with a finely pointed graphite pencil are close in style to those of Ingres. He also created a body of 29 prints, including a group of eighteen etchings of subjects from Shakespeare's "Othello" in 1844. After a period of ill health, exacerbated by his exhausting work on commissions for murals to decorate the Churches of Saint-Roch and Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, Chassériau died at the age of 37 in Paris, on October 8, 1856. 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.

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