François Chifflart
The Rebel
From 7 November 2024
to 23 March 2025
Maison de Victor Hugo
Maisons de Victor Hugo
6 place des Vosges
75004 Paris
Since 2021, the Maison de Victor Hugo has continued its series of monographic exhibitions dedicated to painters connected to Victor Hugo.
After François-Auguste Biard, Louis Boulanger, and Georges Hugo, François Chifflart (1825-1901) will be highlighted this fall through 170 pieces gathered for the occasion.
With the exhibition ”François Chifflart The Rebel”, the museum pays tribute to this master of black and white, complementing its significant collection with loans from many institutions, particularly from the Musée de l’Hôtel Sandelin in Saint-Omer and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, thus offering a retrospective of an artist who deserved to be rediscovered.
His independent and rebellious spirit against academicism and the ruling power curtailed the promising career that awaited him after winning the Grand Prix de Rome in 1851.
François Chifflart La Conscience, detail, 1877
Black chalk or oiled charcoal on paper
© Maisons de Victor Hugo Paris-Guernesey / Paris Musées
This admirer of Hugo expressed his talent in the graphic arts: an exceptional etcher, he contributed to the revival of etching with his “improvisations on copper”; an inspired draftsman, he created illustrations for Travailleurs de la mer in 1869, then executed the drawings for Notre-Dame de Paris and La légende des siècles, which have since become iconic Hugo works.
For Le Monde illustré, he also captured in the collective memory the Parisian fires of the Commune.
François Chifflart Ville conquise ou Sac de Rome par Alaric
Oil on canvas,
musée de l’hôtel Sandelin, Saint-Omer
