La Force et l'Ordre

This 1844 Strength and Order (La Force et l'Ordre) at the Louvre is part of Chassériau's major decorative program for the Cour des Comptes (Court of Accounts) in Paris—the largest and most ambitious commission of his career, now largely destroyed in the 1871 Commune fires. The allegorical figures representing strength and order were part of a complex program decorating the staircase of the state auditing institution, combining classical allegory with the monumental ambition that French Romantic painters aspired to in public decorative work. The surviving fragments and the preparatory studies allow reconstruction of a program that demonstrated Chassériau's ability to work at the scale and ambition of Delacroix's great decorative cycles.

The allegorical figures are rendered with monumental dignity, Chassériau's large-scale decorative painting combining the classical drawing of his Ingres training with the warmer coloring of his mature style.