Ary Scheffer

Ary Scheffer (1795–1858) was born in Dordrecht, the son of a portrait painter and a miniaturist, and attended the drawing academy in Amsterdam from the age of eleven. After his father's death he moved to Lille and then, in 1811, to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. He exhibited at the Salon from 1812 and became a French citizen in 1850. As drawing teacher from 1822 to the children of the future king Louis-Philippe, he gained many commissions, and he painted some 500 portraits, among them Chopin, Liszt, Lafayette and Dickens. His other subjects came largely from Dante, Goethe and Byron; his Francesca da Rimini of 1836 was particularly praised. He then turned to religious themes, beginning with Christus Consolator. He stopped exhibiting after 1846, withdrew from politics after 1848, and died at his summer house in Argenteuil. Here: Saints Augustine and Monica, from 1846.