Le Souvenir

The theme of this poignant painting - a grieving woman, in this case wearing classical costume and kneeling before an antique grave stele in an olive grove at dusk - was a favorite of Chassériau's in the years around 1840. The present painting is said to have been made to commemorate the death of a daughter of the art critic Paul de Saint-Victor, a friend of Chassériau and one of the artist's most influential and ardent advocates. This oral tradition can be traced to a former owner of the work, Baron Arthur Chassériau (1850-1934), who systematically bought back everything that came up at auction by 'that little boy genius', his distant cousin; it is Baron Arthur's great collection of Chassériau's works that forms the basis of holdings by the artist in the Louvre and the Musée d'Orsay. Léonce Bénédite, to whom Baron Arthur gave the present painting, trained with Chassériau at the École du Louvre and the notes he kept became the basis of the first full-scale study devoted to the painter when it was published in 1931.

A summary sketchbook design that prefigures Le Souvenir is in the Louvre; Louis-Antoine Prat dates the sheet to 1837-1838, several before Chassériau developed it into the final painting.