Théodore Chassériau

Théodore Chassériau tried to join two rival camps of French painting: the careful drawing of Ingres and the passionate colour of Delacroix. His pictures combine smooth, graceful figures with warm, romantic colour, and his North African scenes are among the finest French Orientalist works.

He was born in 1819 in El Limón, in present-day Dominican Republic, and entered Ingres’s studio at the age of eleven, becoming his favourite pupil. He later moved toward the Romanticism of Delacroix. After travelling to Algeria in 1846 he painted Arab horsemen and daily life there. Key works include Susanna and the Elders, Andromeda Chained to the Rock by the Nereids and The Tepidarium, and his portrait of Ali Ben Hamet, Caliph of Constantine, of 1845. His work is in the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and the Metropolitan Museum. He died in Paris in 1856, aged only 37.

In Andromeda and the Nereids, look for Ingres in the drawing and Delacroix in the colour.