François Chifflart the unsubmissive

With the François Chifflart exhibition, the Maison de Victor Hugo continues a fascinating series devoted to artists associated with the poet. Following on from François-Auguste Biard, a retrospective that was installed in the museum but never opened due to the epidemic crisis, Louis Boulanger (see article) and Georges Hugo, it is now François Chifflart’s turn to be the subject of such an exhibition. This little-known artist was the illustrator of several of Hugo’s works, whom he met in Guernsey.

1. François Chifflart (1825-1901)
Pericles at his Son’s Deathbed, 1851
Oil on canvas - 110 × 140 cm
Saint-Omer, Musée de l’hôtel Sandelin
(on long term loan from Ensba)
Photo: Ensba

See the image in its page

2. François Chifflart (1825-1901)
Pericles at his Son’s Deathbed, 1851
Oil on canvas - 33 × 40.5 cm
Saint-Omer, Musée de l’hôtel Sandelin
Photo: K. Bogaert/Musées de Saint-Omer

See the image in its page

Born in Saint-Omer, where the exhibition will be shown next spring, François Chifflart trained in Paris with the obscure Nicolas Renié before joining Léon Cogniet’s studio in 1844. He even became his favourite pupil, which gave him a solid education and enabled him to win the Grand Prix de Rome in 1851 for his subject Pericles at his Son’s Deathbed. The work, kept at the Beaux-Arts (ill. 1), is uncompromisingly neoclassical, which was quite surprising at the time, and even more so in view of the strongly romantic later works. A sketch in the Musée de l’hôtel Sandelin (ill. 2) has the rare feature of being painted in grisaille. This should be seen as an early taste for black and white, which he used extensively later on.
If his ambition was to become a painter, his independent and shady character, resistant to the discipline demanded by a stay at the Villa Médicis, was certainly at the root of his relative failure in this field. He became friends with Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and the engraver Joseph Soumy, who were also in…