Man Riding a Horse through the Air

Son of a locksmith, Chifflart studied in Italy from 1851 to 1856, returning to Paris as an exponent of the Romantic revival of the late 1850s. The writer Charles Baudelaire saw in Chifflart’s work a new and dynamic art of the imagination, in opposition to the rising tide of Realism. Although influential for Victor Hugo, Rodolphe Bresdin, and Odilon Redon, Chifflart was not a popular success, and his drawings are exceedingly rare as a result.