The National Galleries of the Grand Palais in Paris presented a retrospective of painter Théodore Chassériau (1819-1856) until May 27. The exhibition will travel afterwards to the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg from June to September 2002; and to the Metropolitan Museum of New York from October 2002 to January 2003.
The retrospective is constituted by more than two hundred pieces including paintings, drawings, and prints from his earlier years to the later period. Belonging to the romantic movement, the artist started as a neoclassical disciple of Ingres and later followed the fogginess of Delacroix. As an outstanding drawer and portraitist, he treated early and masterfully mythological, literary, epic, and religious subject matters. He was an outstanding muralist as well.
Théodore Chassériau was born in the Spanish side of Santo Domingo, in El Limon, near Samana.
Without a doubt, his Creole ascendancy is felt throughout the oeuvres, in his figures of black people and North Africans. His Mestizo talent was attributed to this, and he liked to mention his Antillian birthplace.
Another exhibition of Théodore Chassériau, one of the most famous Dominican painters by birth, is being prepared for next year in the Dominican Republic.
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MARIANNE DE TOLENTINO