Ary SCHEFFER and workshop
 (Dordrecht, 1795 - Argenteuil, 1858)

 Mignon regretting his homeland
 Mignon aspiring to heaven

 Two oils on canvas in the same frame
 44 x 22 cm each

 Mignon is a character from Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, by Goethe (1749-1832) written in 1795-1796. Madame de Staël had proposed this literary work to the attention of the French public as early as 1810, as she had done for Lenore de Bürger and Faust by Goethe.

 Mignon is a young Italian girl aged twelve or thirteen, who arrives in Germany with a group of other travellers. For her beloved, she sings the famous aria: "Do you know the country where the lemon tree blooms?", which is an invitation to go and live in Italy, her native country.
 Scheffer did not stray far from Goethe's text. Mignon is young, well-built, she has long, brown hair, slightly curly. She goes barefoot because Goethe depicted her as a being close to nature.
 The artist's daughter, Cornelia (born 1830), posed for the character Mignon.

 Mignon regretting his homeland is of great simplicity: a vast arid landscape, sparse vegetation, a cloudless blue sky, a flight of migratory birds, a discreet allusion to Mignon's desire to leave for another country. Scheffer exhibited his final version at the Salon of 1836.
 A version of the painting is in the Dordrecht Museum
 The version presented here is slightly different from the 1836 version, as migratory birds are not present.

 Three years after Mignon regretting his homeland, Scheffer painted its counterpart Mignon aspiring to heaven.
 Mignon has the feeling of her imminent death. Dressed in white, she goes into the garden and raises her eyes to the sky with fervor.

 The two Mignon paintings were exhibited together at the Salon of 1839. As was often the case, reactions in the press were quite divergent. Barbier criticized the subject, which he found too vague for a painting, while Amans, Janin, and Mérimée criticized the anatomy. But praise was also abundant, and according to the very popular Musée des Familles, Marguerite et Mignon, Scheffer's "poetic and celestial figures" had even enjoyed "immense success."
 Even before the Salon, the two Mignons were acquired by the Duke of Orléans, who was to designate them in his will as his most beloved paintings.
 A few years later, this success found an echo in the engravings that Aristide Louis exhibited at the Salon of 1844 and which were to constitute one of the greatest commercial successes of the time.

 Source : Ary Scheffer by Léo Ewals, Éditions Paris Musées 1996