Q97590521

Carrying the 1801 date also assigned to several other works in the Musée de la Vie romantique's Scheffer holdings, this oil on canvas likely belongs to either the artist's earliest experiments or reflects a cataloguing approximation. Scheffer was born in 1795 in Dordrecht, where his father Johann Baptist Scheffer ran a successful portrait practice. Growing up in a working studio, the young Ary would have handled brushes and mixed colours as part of daily life, and precociously early works are plausible. However, the clustering of multiple canvases under the same 1801 date suggests an inventory convention — possibly the year of a studio acquisition or the earliest documented provenance — rather than actual execution. The work survives as part of the broad Scheffer archive that gives the Musée de la Vie romantique its distinctive character.

Works from Scheffer's earliest years, if authentic, would display the direct, somewhat unpolished technique expected of a child trained by a working portrait painter. The ground preparation, pigment choices, and canvas type can often determine whether a date of 1801 is plausible or whether the work belongs to a later period of his career.