Man Riding a Horse through the Air

Man Riding a Horse through the Air — François-Nicolas Chifflart. 1860–70.

Medium: Charcoal, with stumping and erasing, on tan laid paper, squared in white chalk, and laid down on blue wove paper with blue fibers. Dimensions: 61.5 × 47.4 cm (24 1/4 × 18 11/16 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

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.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.