United States or Turkmenistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Scheffer looked up and at the lattice of the window saw the white face of the woman he had known so well and intimately for a full score of years. The terror of the occasion did away with all courtly etiquette. "Who is with you?" asked the Queen. "Only Lafayette," was the answer. "Come in at once, both of you. The King has abdicated and you must conduct us to a place of safety."
He was the uncle of Jane Stirling and Mrs. W. Hanna, the editor of the Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, says that Jane Stirling was a cousin and particular friend of Thomas Erskine. The latter used in later life to regard her and the Duchess de Broglie as the most remarkable women he had ever met: In her later years she lived much in Paris, and counted among her friends there Ary Scheffer.
Her delight is in serving, and willingly and more than willingly, for without thought she breaks the vase of precious ointment and wipes the feet of the beloved with the hairs of her head. Madame Scheffer sought in all ways to serve her sons, and so we find there was always a gentle rivalry between Ary and his mother as to who could love most.
When twenty-eight years of age we find Madame Scheffer a widow, with three sons: by name, Ariel, Henri and Arnold. Madame Scheffer had a little money not much, but enough to afford her a small, living income.
The charming artist daughter of Louis Philippe, the Princess Marie, pupil and friend of Ary Scheffer, the artist, married the Duke of Würtemberg, and died early of consumption. Her only child was sent to France, and placed under the care of his grandmother. Princess Clémentine married a colonel in the Austrian service, a prince of the Catholic branch of the house of Coburg.
Long years after, when Ary Scheffer was himself a grandfather, he remembered with affection the advice of his mother, and repeated it to his children. And thus the vital power of good example lives on from generation to generation, keeping the world ever fresh and young.
The public judged less favorably; "they admired the noble head of Gaston de Foix, but, uninterested in the remainder of the picture, they turned off to look at 'The Soldier's Widow." Scheffer did not listen to his flatterers; but, remembering Michel Angelo's words to the young sculptor, "The light of the public square will test its value," he believed in the verdict of the people, and never again painted in the same manner.
And in fact no one can look upon any of the works of Scheffer, done after Eighteen Hundred Thirty, without being profoundly impressed with the brooding sadness that covers all as with a garment.
He painted through habit, and the work had merit, but only at rare intervals was there in it that undefinable something which all can recognize, but none analyze, that stamps the product as great art. When, in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty, Scheffer married, it was the death of his art. The artist does business on a very small margin of inspiration. Do you understand me?
Pale and trembling, she listened to the offer of a crown to her husband. Then with extreme emotion she replied to M. Scheffer, the speaker of the party: "How could you undertake such a mission? That M. Thiers should have charged himself with it, I can understand. He little knew us. But that you, who have been admitted to our intimacy who knew us so well ah! we can never forgive it."
Word Of The Day