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for FRANCOIS NICOLAS CHIFFLART
FRANCOIS NICOLAS CHIFFLART
1825 - 1901
(b Saint-Omer, Pas de Calais, 21 March 1825; d Paris, 19 March 1901).
French printmaker and painter. He was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1844 and two years later he became a pupil of Léon Cogniet. In 1850 he won third prize in the Prix de Rome competition with Zenobia on the Banks of the River Araxes (untraced; sketch Paris, priv. col., see 1972 exh. cat., no. 3). The next year he won the Prix de Rome with an equally classical and academic Salon machine, Pericles at the Deathbed of his Son (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). At the Salon of 1859 his drawings Faust in Combat and Faust at the Sabbat (untraced; lithographed reproductions, London, V&A) were admired by Charles Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier. In the same year his brother-in-law, Alfred Cadart, published an album, Oeuvres de M. Chifflart, Grand Prix de Rome, a copy of which was presented to Victor Hugo.
In 1862 Chifflart became a founder-member of the Société des Aquafortistes and continued to pursue his interest in printmaking. In 1865 he produced what is often considered his masterpiece, the Improvisations on Copper, in which may be found all his strengths and weaknesses as an artist. His work was always eclectic, abounding in often ill-digested references to other artists, particularly Michelangelo, but there is always a distinctive quality in his inventions, which makes his images memorable. J. Hetzel and A. Lacroix's edition of Hugo's Les Travailleurs de la mer, containing 70 illustrations by Chifflart, appeared in 1869. In this work the powerful brooding grandeur of Hugo's imagination finds perfect expression in Chifflart's claustrophobic and intense illustrations. In 1868 Hugo wrote to Auguste Vacquerie: 'Chifflart has made a supreme success with the illustrations to Les Travailleurs de la mer, above all in expressing its terrible aspect'. These illustrations remain some of the most familiar visual counterparts to Hugo's work. They may also have influenced some of the work of Odilon Redon. Chifflart continued to be influenced by Hugo in his Salon exhibits (e.g. Esmeralda and Gaston Phoebus; Saint-Omer, Mus. Hôtel Sandelin) but with no critical success, and his portrait of the writer (exh. 1868; Paris, Mus. Victor Hugo) attracted little attention.
At the Salon of 1863 Chifflart once again attempted to establish his reputation as a history painter with David Victorious (Saint-Omer, Mus. Hôtel Sandelin), which received a mixed response from the critics. He was awarded the commission to decorate the ceiling of the Cercle International for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1867 (untraced, ?destr.), which gave him hope of further ambitious projects, but no such commissions resulted. His relationship with the world of officialdom, never easy, became strained. He withdrew into himself, becoming more bitter and intransigent as he grew older.
The main characteristics of Chifflart's essentially conservative style are a recherché academicism mingled with a romanticism reminiscent of Gustave Doré. In his successful work he managed to create images of startling power drawn in a free calligraphic manner, giving the impression of being improvised directly on the plate. Each is imbued with a fatal melancholy, which also characterized the artist's life.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. Tardieu: 'Un Improvisateur sur cuivre', L'Art, viii-x (1877), pp. 199-202, 217-22, 249-54
H. Béraldi: Les Graveurs du XIXe siècle, v (Paris, 1886), p. 8
L. Viltart: 'F. N. Chifflart', L'Artiste, n. s., xiv (Aug 1897), pp. 91-6; (Sept 1897), pp. 186-201
François-Nicolas Chifflart, 1825-1901 (exh. cat., ed. P. G. Chabert; Saint-Omer, Mus. Hôtel Sandelin, 1972)
MICHAEL HOWARD
© Oxford University Press 2007
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