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Faust and Marguerite in the Garden
(Ary Scheffer)

Description

Théophile Gautier described Scheffer as “a transposed poet; Dante, Goethe and Byron were more his masters than Michelangelo, Raphael or Titian.” [1] He became particularly well-known as a painter of Goethe’s Faust, a contemporary drama with roots in a sixteenth-century story. [2] Scheffer’s interest in the Faust story can be traced back to 1825, [3] and between 1831 and 1858 he painted eight major compositions with themes from Faust, most of them episodes centering on Marguerite. The Detroit Institute of Art owns a version of the Marguerite Leaving Church painted in 1838 (fig. 94) [4] in which Scheffer has already established the cool Ingresque tonalities, the historical costumes, and the idealized physiognomies that he would maintain in the Marguerite and Faust in the Garden (cat. 52 fig. 95). This was exhibited, along with Faust at the Sabbath, in the 1846 Salon (the last to which Scheffer sent works).

The subject of Faust and Marguerite (Gretchen) in the garden of her neighbor Martha who looks on with Mephistopheles comes from Part One of Goethe’s Faust. The exquisitely painted Marguerite, beautiful and innocent, has a finely modeled torso, exuding a sinuous sensuality of which she appears unaware. Faust, determined to seduce her and transformed by Mephistopheles’ magic into a handsome youth, places his head close to her while bringing about her seduction and ultimate ruin. He says:

“No sighs or trembling! Look in my eyes,
And let them, let this handclasp say to you
Things beyond human speech.
Ah love, wholly to yield one’s self, to know
Deep bliss that has no ending.
Marked for eternity, so deep,
This cannot end – unless despair were all!
Nay, there’s no ending then.”

Only the mocking face of Mephistopheles in the shadows may portend the tragic conclusion of this love affair. The picture exhibited here is the most important extant version of this composition. [5] Whether it is, in fact, the work that was sent to the 1846 Salon cannot be ascertained on the basis of published information, but there are, in any event, strong indications that this was the artist’s first version. [6] It is dated 1846 and, more significantly, there are pentiments visible (around the head of Faust and at the bottom of his cloak) which indicate subtle compositional changes that the artist was much more likely to have made in initially working out the composition than in painting replicas. Such changes are consistent with the artist’s remarkable attention to the expressive nuances of pose evident throughout the painting, as, for example, in the juxtaposition of Faust and Marguerite’s hands or in the parallel lines of Faust’s extended leg and the long fold in Marguerite’s skirt When Scheffer exhibited at the 1846 Salon after an hiatus of six years the public eagerly awaited his entries. The two Faust paintings were purchased immediately from the Salon by the dealer and bronze foundry master, Susse. [7] The critical reaction to Scheffer’s reappearance was mixed. Baudelaire, who had previously praised Scheffer, was particularly harsh and made Scheffer the focus of a section in his Salon review entitled “On M. Ary Scheffer and the Apes of Sentiment.” His criticisms, however, focused on another of Scheffer’s seven Salon entries for that year; the Faust and Marguerite was not mentioned. Théophile Thoré, on the other hand, consistently championed Scheffer and devoted several adoring pages to this painting. He wrote that Scheffer was “endowed with a comprehensive intelligence and a rare sensibility … His turn of mind is above all metaphysical, like the genius of men of the North … He has found in Goethe a mood sympathetic to his own genius. No one has better translated the German poetry, which is a bit French and revolutionary, especially in Goethe … His Marguerite is form and beauty. What good are the riches of the spirit, if they do not shine in striking and luminous images.” [8] He described Marguerite’s figure as supple and round and imprisoned in a white bodice. He notes that she is still the “German Virgin” that Scheffer had painted in his earlier Marguerite Leaving Church, a fact that the artist himself suggests by the sliver of a church building visible in the background of this painting. But the figure of Marguerite also calls to mind the Madonnas of Raphael, and in this melding of northern and southern Renaissance traditions Scheffer comes very close to the work of the German Nazarenes and to Ingres, whom he so admired, and anticipates the British Pre-Raphaelite movement of a decade later.

NOTES
[1] Quoted, Paris, Grand Palais, French Painting 1774-1830: The Age of Revolution, 1974, p. 606.

[2] The first pictorial interpretations of Goethe’s Faust (published in 1808) were by German artists, most notably Cornelius (1810) and Retzch (1816). French interest in Faust had increased since Mme de Stael published her De l’Allemagne, and there were several translations in the 1820s as well as performances in Paris.

[3] In 1825 he did a drawing for the 1829 painting Marguerite Imploring the Virgin.

[4] The dimensions of this painting, 215.1 by 137.5 cm., indicate that it cannot have been the version sent to the 1839 Salon which measured 250 by 180 cm. according to the Louvre archives as transcribed in Paris, Institut Néerlandais, Ary Scheffer 1795-1858. Dessins, acquarelles, esquisses à l’huile, 1980, p. 24 (Salon version), unless as sometimes occurred the painting was measured with its frame. It would seem probably to have been the first version.

[5] Several smaller versions and copies have passed through the sale rooms in recent years: 25 by 20 inches (64 by 51 cm.), Sotheby’s, London, Nov. 25, 1981, no. 243 and Sotheby’s, London, Oct. 6, 1982, no. 116; 29 3/4 by 19 inches (75.5 by 48.5 cm.), Sotheby’s, London, March 19, 1980, no. 26; 20 1/2 by 26 1/4 inches (52.1 by 66.7 cm.), Christie’s, London, Oct. 10, 1986, no. 80. Ewals, op. cit., 1987, p. 308, also notes a version acquired by Goupil, Paris, Oct. 15, 1852; sold to Gambart, Nov. 11, 1852 and a version sold by Agnew to Ashton; Manchester Exhibition, 1857.

[6] Both Kolb (op. cit., 1937, p. 342) and Ewals (op. cit., 1987, p. 308) list the Freiherr von Lotzbeck Collection, Munich as owning a version of Faust and Marguerite in the Garden as well as a Faust at the Sabbath, also from the 1846 Salon. Kolb gives the dimensions of the former as 92 by 60 cm. without citing a source and lists no other version of the picture. Ewals gives the dimensions as 215 by 130 cm., citing a 1927 catalogue of the Lotzbeck collection. These dimensions, extremely close to those of our picture, would suggest the Lotzbeck provenance for our picture. Ewals lists the Lotzbeck version secondly in his catalogue, after the Salon version, the dimensions of which he gives in this publication as 260 by 200 cm. Ewals here gives no source for his ascription of these dimensions to the Salon painting, and, in fact, contradicts his earlier (and probably more accurate) essay in Paris, Institut Néerlandais, op. cit., where he published (p. 24) information from the Louvre archive indicating that the Faust and Marguerite in the Garden was submitted without dimensions. The possibility that the Lotzbeck version was the Salon version cannot be dismissed. However, the disparity between the dimensions of the Salon version of the Faust at the Sabbath (as published by Ewals) which may however have included the frame, and of the Lotzbeck version (as given by Kolb) casts some doubt on this possibility since the two paintings were purchased as a pair from the Salon by the dealer Susse.

[7] A. de Faniez, “Le Salon,” L’Artiste, IV série, VI, 1846, p. 143, records that M. Susse paid 45,000 francs for the two paintings.

[8] Théophile Thoré, Le Salon de 1846, Paris, 1846, pp. 83-85: “il est doué d’une intelligence compréhensive et d’une rare sensibilité … La tournure de son esprit est surtout métaphysique, comme le génie des hommes du Nord … Il avait trouvé dans Goethe une veine sympathique à son propre génie. Personne n’a mieux que lui traduit la poésie allemande, qui est bien un peu française et révolutionnaire, dans Goethe surtout …Sa Marguerite qu’il poursuit est la forme et la beauté. A quoi bon toutes les richesses de l’esprit, si elles n’éclatent pas dans les images lumineuses et saissantes!”

Measurements
85 3/4 x 53 inches (217.8 x 134.6 cm.)
Type
Oil on paper laid down on panel
Provenance

Possibly Salon of 1846, no. 1602 (purchased by Susse);
Possibly Freiherr von Lotzbeck Collection, Munich.

Literature

F. Neubert, Vom Doctor Faustus zu Goethes Faust, Leipzig, 1932, p. 218;
Marthe Kolb, Ary Scheffer et son temps. 1795-1858, Paris, 1937, p. 342:
Leo Ewals, “Ary Scheffer, le peintre poète,” L’Oeil, November 1980, p. 40;
Institute Néerlandais, Paris, Ary Scheffer 1795-1858. Dessins, acquarelles, esquisses à l’huile (exhibition catalogue), p. 24 (Salon ersion);
Leo Ewals, Ary Scheffer: Sa Vie et Son Oeuvre, Nimègue, 1987, pp. 307-8.

Where is It?
Acquired by a Private Collector
Historical Period
Romanticism - 1810-1870
Subject
Literary
School
French
Price band
Sold or not available