Chasseriau Theodore

Born on 20 September 1819: Théodore Chassériau, Parisian painter and printmaker who died on 08 October 1856.
Born in Haiti at El Limón, near Samaná (now in the Dominican Republic), Chassériau moved in 1822 with his family to Paris, where he received a bourgeois upbringing under the supervision of an older brother. A precociously gifted draftsman, he entered Ingres’s studio at the age of 11 and remained there until Ingres left to head the Académie de France in Rome in 1834. He made his Salon début in 1836 with several portraits and religious subjects, including Cain Accursed, for which he received a third-class medal. Among his many submissions in subsequent years were Susanna Bathing (1839), a Marine Venus (1838) and the Toilet of Esther (1841); these three paintings of nude female figures combine an idealization derived from Ingres with a sensuality characteristic of Chassériau.