Scheffer, Ary (1795-1858; Dutch)
The Temptation of Christ 1854
Oil on canvas, 75.5 x 55.0 cm
Purchased, 1886 (advice of Alfred Thomson)
National Gallery of Victoria (311.9/1)

Described in both NGV 1894 and 1905 as a small replica of the original in the Louvre (c.1849-56), this work was bought in London.

Scheffer, who worked in Paris, was known mainly for religious images of this simplified neoclassical type. Later, the NGV acquired his Christ and the Maries (also painted in 1854) and Marguerite and Faust in the Garden (1846).

Refs.

AR 1886, p.26; NGV 1894, p.24 (I.La Trobe Gallery, no.29; ill.); NGV 1905, p.21 (I.La Trobe Gallery, no.37; ill.) [£126] 

See Hoff (1995), p.271, with references and further details, also including information on the Louvre painting, and other replicas in Liverpool and elsewhere; and Gott 19C (2003), p.36 (entry by Laurie Benson).

For the other NGV works by Scheffer, see Hoff 1995, p.270 (Christ and the Maries) and http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/col/work/74782 (Marguerite and Faust). For Scheffer, see also Bénézit 12, pp.563-65 (listing the present work) and AKL 101 (2018), pp.408-10 (with an extensive bibliography)