By the sword and the plow: Theodore Chasseriau's Cour des Comptes murals and Algeria

We can therefore assume that a visitor to the Cour des Comptes passed between the murals impressed by the discretionary power of the offices for which Chasseriau's "frescoes" acted as a ceremonial preface. He harnessed the awe inspired by the institutional role of the Cour des Comptes to a processional ritual that announced what it required of the viewer at the outset. A grisaille figure of Silence greeted visitors at the base of the stairwell with a finger to her lips, reminding them that they were entering hallowed civic space. Gautier insisted that she "indicates the respect due a serious place." He further characterized the viewer being taken in hand by this figure--"the genius loci, the serene and calm initiator"--as tantamount to a sacred rite. (56)

Here again we encounter a central tenet of Saint-Simonian thought, namely, the "preococcupation with artistic utterance as a medium for transmitting moral and social imperatives." (57) According to McWilliam, Saint-Simonians privileged the savant, a category that included scholars, thinkers, artists, writers, and poets. Savants were granted the powers of a priest figure to accomplish social solidarity through proselytizing discourse and imagery. (58) Featured in the same panel as Silence, Chasseriau's Study and Meditation seem to pay tribute to the work of savants in Algeria, many of whom were Saint-Simonians. These ranged from Enfantin himself to the archaeologists and authropologists working for the Commission d'Exploration Scientifique d'Algerie, a multidisciplinary survey of the colony begun in 1839. More important, though, Chasseriau himself seems to have taken on the role of the savant in the Saint-Simonian sense, organizing a visual experience, a panoramic allegorical rite in three dimensions, that promoted the communal solidarity envisioned by utopian art critics.

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Algeria and the Building of National Consensus

According to proponents of colonization, Algeria offered salvation for the French nation in the same way that edifying monumental decoration was expected to galvanize communal identity. Tocqueville defended the Algerian project in precisely these terms: national glory in Africa was essential to counteract the debilitating effects of individualism unleashed by democracy. (59) It was therefore an ideal subject and source for a painter charged with murals for an important public space. Algeria was by no means an uncontroversial subject, but its champions believed fervently that the conquest would unify France. It promised to efface political differences and generate the "communal hopes" and "common goals" that modern allegory required to release its meaning.