Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3b.pdf/173

SCH might always have the use of the university laboratory whenever he required. In 1775 Scheele was appointed provisor at an apothecary's shop in Köping, and two years later he purchased the business from the widow of the late proprietor. Here, under very unfavourable circumstances, he followed up his experiments with increased ardour; and here he died on the 21st of May, 1786. The number and importance of his researches are surprising. He discovered the tartaric, fluoric (or at least fluosilicic), arsenic, uric, purpuric, molybdic, hydrosulphuric, lactic, tungstic, oxalic, citric, malic, and gallic acids, examining their properties, many of their compounds, and pointing out the mode of preparation. He discovered also baryta and chlorine, though he misunderstood the nature of the latter. He showed the distinction between silica and alumina. He ascertained the nature of graphite. He showed the production of carbonate of soda when sheet-iron or quicklime is moistened with a solution of common salt. He discovered the composition of prussic acid. He obtained glycerine, and studied its properties. In 1777 he ascertained the constitution of the atmosphere, and obtained and examined oxygen and nitrogen without any knowledge of the experiments of Dr. Priestley, performed about three years earlier. All these wonderful results were obtained in a short life of forty-four years, under very unfavourable circumstances, with the rudest apparatus, and without the advantage of a regular scientific education. But his patience, his manual dexterity, his singular penetration, and a sort of happy instinct, enabled him to overcome all these drawbacks. As an observer of facts he has no superior. As a theorist he can claim but a very subordinate rank. Nor does he ever appear to have felt the importance of the balance, which in the hands of Lavoisier enabled chemistry to take place among the exact sciences.—J. W. S.  SCHEEMAKERS,, a Flemish sculptor, born at Antwerp in 1691. He went early to Denmark, where he worked as a journeyman, and thence he performed the journey to Rome on foot, being too poor to venture on any other mode of travelling. From Rome, he travelled again on foot, about 1730, to England, where he at last found sufficient employment. Scheemakers, however, again visited Rome, where he remained two years, prosecuting his studies, and eventually in 1735 settled in this country, where he was long the rival of Rysbrack and Roubiliac. He retired in 1770 to his native town, and there soon afterwards died. Scheemakers did little during the latter years of his residence in England; but his works are very numerous; there are many monuments by him in Westminster abbey, all distinguished for their elaborate costume and careful working of the marble—essential qualities of the sculpture of that day, as is abundantly seen in the works of Rysbrack and Roubiliac. Among the studies of Scheemakers made in Rome was a beautiful small marble copy of the group of the Laocoon, which was purchased by the earl of Lincoln; an Italian of the name of Vevini made a mould of it, and produced some excellent casts from it. The distinguished English sculptor Nollekens was the pupil of Scheemakers.—(Smith, Nollekens and his Times, &c.)—R. N. W.  SCHEFFER,, one of the most distinguished painters of the modern French school, was born at Dort on the 10th of February, 1795; his mother was a native of Dort, his father was a German; and he was educated at Lille. He was thus German by descent, Dutch by birth, and French by education Ary was brought up by his mother; she removed with him to Paris in 1811, and he there became the pupil of Guérin, with whom he had the opportunity of becoming acquainted with Gericault, the great leader of the new naturalist school of France, as opposed to the classical mannerism established by the school of David. In 1819 appeared his picture of "Les Bourgeois de Calais," which attracted considerable notice; he devoted himself at this period also to portrait painting—one of his first patrons was Lafayette. The Scheffers were Orleanists, and Ary and his brother Henri were concerned in the Carbonari conspiracy of Béfort in 1822. Ary was introduced to Louis Philippe, and became instructor to his children in painting and drawing, in 1826. In 1830 he was sent as messenger to the duke at Neuilly, and eighteen years afterwards he handed the king into his carriage on his flight from Paris. When Ary Scheffer became acquainted with Ingres, who had returned from his long residence in Rome with his classical manner much modified, Ary about 1825 also much idealized his style, and from this time gradually advanced from the natural to the abstract sentimental which characterizes almost all his later works. Among his successively most remarkable pictures are—"Faust in his Study;" "Margaret at the spinning wheel;" "Margaret at Church;" "The Giaour," &c. After the Revolution Louis Philippe gave him some commissions for Versailles, but trophy subjects were not suited to his poetic genius. In 1830 was born his natural daughter Cornélie, who was afterwards married to M. Marjolin, a physician. In 1835 appeared his "Francesca di Rimini," which was purchased by the duke of Orleans, and at the Orleans sale in 1853 it realized forty-three thousand six hundred francs. This was followed by the "Mignons;" "Margaret coming out of Church;" the "Roi de Thulé;" and in 1839 "Le Christ Consolateur," also purchased by the duke of Orleans; it realized at the Orleans sale fifty-two thousand five hundred francs. In 1839 he lost his mother. After 1846 he ceased to exhibit his works at the Louvre, though some of the most remarkable were painted after this date, as "Faust and Margaret in the Garden;" "Dante and Beatrice;" "St. Monica with St. Augustin;" "Les Saintes Femmes;" "Ruth and Naomi;" "Faust a la Coupe;" "Les Gémissements," or "Les douleurs de la Terre;" and his last work, "The Angel announcing the Resurrection of Jesus." In 1850 he married the widow of General Baudrand. He died 10th June, 1858, in his sixty-fourth year. Ary Schefter was essentially the poet painter, and his works are of a very high order, though his mind seems to have been prejudicially influenced by a weakly bodily state; his works betray a kind of mystic melancholy which cannot be overlooked; they not only want cheerfulness, but they want happiness; impending evil seems to hang over all his subjects, which are nearly invariably from the dark aspects of life; even his "Christus Consolator" is but a picture of human misery, bordering on despair. Most of his works are well known even in this country, from the admirable engravings of them by the best artists of France—Blanchard, Girard, Henriquel-Dupont, Calamatta, Caron, and others. In 1860 a memoir of the life of Ary Scheffer was published in London by Mrs. Grote.—R. N. W.  SCHEFFER,, brother of Ary, was born at the Hague, 27th September 1798. Like his brother, he was a pupil of Guérin. His range of subjects is somewhat wider than his brother's; but he is much inferior to him as a painter, wanting his grave earnestness of purpose and deep religious feeling. Among his principal religious and historical pictures may be named the "Infant Christ," "the Mater Dolorosa," and "Jesus at the House of Martha and Mary;" in history, "Charlotte Corday protected by the members of the sections from the popular fury"—generally considered his masterpiece, and now in the Luxemburg—and "Jean D'Arc entering Orleans;" in genre, a "Peasant Child Reading," the "Young Captive," &c. He also painted a great many characteristic portraits of distinguished contemporaries, among others, Augustin Thierry, Louis Blanc, Orfila, Blainville, and Charles Dickens. M. Henrí Scheffer received the cross of the legion of honour in 1837. At the Exposition Universelle of 1855 he was awarded a medal of the first class. He died at Paris, March 15, 1862.—J. T—e.  SCHEFFER,, a distinguished German antiquary, was born at Strasburg in 1621, and is said to have been a lineal descendant of Peter Schöffer, the celebrated inventor of printing. The fear of those wars by which Germany and France were troubled during the seventeenth century impelled him to seek a quieter home in Sweden, where he was graciously received by Queen Christina, and in 1648 obtained the chair of eloquence and law at Upsala. Here he died 26th March, 1679. Among his numerous monographs we note his "Dissertatio de Varietate navium apud Veteres;" "Upsalia Antiqua;" "Lapponia, seu gentis regionisque Lapponicæ descriptio accurata," and "Suecia Litterata."—K. E.  SCHEIDT,, a learned German divine, who was born at Strasburg in 1614, and died in 1670. He collected from the Mishna and Gemara passages illustrating the scriptures. That portion of this work which relates to the New Testament was published by I. G. Menschen.—D. W. R.  SCHEINER,, a German astronomer, was born at Walda in Swabia in 1575, and died at Neisse in Silesia on the 18th of July, 1650. At the age of twenty he entered the order of jesuits, and afterwards became, successively, professor of Hebrew and mathematics at Freiburg in the Breisgau, a lecturer on astronomy at Rome, professor of mathematics at Ingolstadt, and rector of the Jesuit college at Neisse. In 1611 he discovered, independently of Galileo, though somewhat later in date, the existence of spots in the sun. He made a long and 