The eternal boarder

The eternal boarder

These two portraits aren’t far from each other in the immense Louvre, and you can easily see them at one go: Ernest Chassériau, in the Uniform of the Ecole Navale in Brest, exhibited at the Salon of 1836 by his elder brother Théodore Chassériau (Sully, room 943), and The Student, painted by Camille Corot around 1854 (Sully, room 949). The two boys resemble each other, and their poses are identical. They are well-behaved boys, grave in their black or navy-blue uniforms. Their hands are obediently crossed; they rest their elbows against the chairback; their lips are tight; their eyes sad. Both of them have a dimpled chin, scant fantasy against the brown David-esque background framing their silhouettes. A heavy melancholy pervades these two portraits of the French boarder who has left his family for the school where he will suffer corporal punishment, from the Jesuit secondary schools of the Ancien Regime to the lycées of the Republic and the Empire, a confinement from which one never recovers. Lord knows, I am at their side.