Francès Cornelia Marjolin-Scheffer (29 July 183020 December 1899) was a French artist and designer, notable for her drawings, ceramics and sculptures.

Life

Born in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

, Cornélia Scheffer was the daughter of the

Dordrecht Dordrecht (), historically known in English as Dordt (still colloquially used in Dutch, ) or Dort, is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Western Netherlands, lo ...

-born

Ary Scheffer Ary Scheffer (10 February 179515 June 1858) was a Dutch-French Romantic painter. He was known mostly for his works based on literature, with paintings based on the works of Dante, Goethe, Lord Byron and Walter Scott, Macmillan, Duncan (2023), ' ...

. In her birth registration, her father stated her mother's name as "Maria Johanna de Nes", but this is traditionally held to be a pseudonym for an anonymous woman of royal descent. M. Sterckx
« Scheffer, Cornelia »
in

Digitaal Vrouwenlexicon van Nederland ''1001 Vrouwen uit de Nederlandse geschiedenis'' is a compilation of 1001 biographies of famous women of the Netherlands spanning roughly 1700 years. Project The book is the result of a research project called the Digital Women's lexicon of the ...

. Named after Ary's mother Cornelia, Cornélia was initially raised in the countryside but when she turned six she was entrusted to her paternal grandmother, Cornelia Scheffer-Lamme. She spent much time at her father's studio on rue Chaptal in the

Nouvelle Athènes Nouvelle is a French word, the feminine form of "new". It may refer to: ;Places * Nouvelle, Quebec, a municipality in Quebec, Canada * Nouvelle-Église, a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department, France * Port-la-Nouvelle, a commune in the Aude dep ...

in Paris, a district much-frequented by artists. Her father's brother Arie Johannes Lamme painted her sitting at a piano in the small studio. Cornelia herself produced several bust of figures such as her father and

Goethe Johann Wolfgang (von) Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German polymath who is widely regarded as the most influential writer in the German language. His work has had a wide-ranging influence on Western literature, literary, Polit ...

as well as copies of Ary's paintings in painted stone. In 1845 she married René Marjolin (1812–1895), a paediatrician and surgeon at the hôpital Sainte-Marguerite. After her father's death she bought his studios and his rented house. ''Ernest Psichari : l'ordre et l'errance'', par Frédérique Neau-Dufour, 2001, Éditions du Cerf, . Adjudging that

Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi ( , ; 2 August 1834 – 4 October 1904) was a French sculptor and painter. He is best known for designing ''Liberty Enlightening the World'', commonly known as the Statue of Liberty. Early life and education Barthol ...

's designs for a monument to her father in Dordrecht was not sufficiently true to life, she and the sculptor Joseph Mezzara stepped in and designed it instead, though she was unable to attend its inauguration ceremony on 8 May 1862 due to illness. It was the Netherlands' first monument to a contemporary artist. T. Coppens, ''Suzanne en Edouard Manet: De liefde van een Hollandse pianiste en een Parijse schilder''. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 2014 . In the 1860s she designed pots to which

Édouard Manet Édouard Manet (, ; ; 23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French Modernism, modernist painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, as well as a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism (art movement), R ...

then added floral motifs. During the

Franco-Prussian War The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the War of 1870, was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. Lasting from 19 July 1870 to 28 Janua ...

in the following decade, she and her husband worked in a temporary hospital set up in her studio. She died in Paris on 20 December 1899 and was buried there in the family grave at the

cimetière de Montmartre The Cemetery of Montmartre () is a cemetery in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France, that dates to the early 19th century. Officially known as the Cimetière du Nord, it is the third largest necropolis in Paris, after the Père Lachaise Cemet ...

. She left several of her father's works to Dordrecht Museum, which also houses a number of her own works. Some of her works are also now in the Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in

Rotterdam Rotterdam ( , ; ; ) is the second-largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city in the Netherlands after the national capital of Amsterdam. It is in the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of South Holland, part of the North S ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Scheffer, Cornélia 1830 births 1899 deaths Sculptors from Paris French people of Dutch descent French designers French potters French women ceramists 19th-century French women sculptors 19th-century French sculptors Burials at Montmartre Cemetery