Tony Scherman

Critic Jacques Henric underscored the complexities of About 1789 and Chasing Napoleon: “The French Revolution is not only the preparation, the dress rehearsal and the quintessence of what would constitute the horrible grandeur and the superb infamy of the centuries that followed [but also the] perfectly monstrous utopia that the 20th century would attempt to bring about: to make a new mankind.”

Scherman expressed the horror of the Third Reich in a painting with a horse subject for Oradour.

In contrast to Eugène Delacroix’s 1830 heroic-image painting Liberty Leading the People Scherman devised Jacques: The New Boss The rooster is an old Gallic symbol revived to express national resurgence during The French Revolution and now the unofficial national symbol of France.

This cycle of paintings and works on paper culminated in the exhibition Chasing Napoleon.

The architects and minor figures of the First French Empire, Napoleonic France and the Third Reich were intertwined in a narrative of tyranny, ambitions and inflicted suffering.

A horse is depicted grazing in a meadow but the title refers to the massacre of French civilians by the German Waffen-SS in 1944, but as Scherman has noted, the painting’s significance is absent if the massacre is not known by a viewer; “the panting’s meaning is that it’s just a horse painting [and that] happens with all art all the time.” The Chasing Napoleon exhibition was organized by Curatorial Assistance Travelling Exhibitions and toured to public galleries in the United States and Canada in 2001-2002.

Antony Scherman (August 13, 1950 – February 28, 2023) was a Canadian painter.

He was known for his use of encaustic and portraiture to depict events of historical, cultural and popular significance.

Scherman was born in Toronto, but he grew up in Europe.

His father Paul Scherman, a conductor and violinist, and mother settled in Paris in 1955.

Paul Scherman relocated to London by 1958, and Tony Scherman arrived there by 1959 to live with his father.

He continued to be based in Toronto with more than 100 solo exhibitions in Canada, the United States, England and Europe and has been a visiting lecturer at numerous universities, art schools and public galleries in England, Canada and the United States since the mid-1970s.

After first attending the Byam Shaw School of Art, Scherman then went to the Royal College of Art and graduated with an MA in 1974.

While at the Royal College of Art, Scherman was introduced to encaustic by his tutor, John Golding.

The College acquired a painting for the collection from Scherman's thesis exhibition.

In 1976, he was included in the notable and controversial exhibition entitled "The Human Clay", organized by artist R.B. Kitaj for the Arts Council of Great Britain (now Arts Council England).

Scherman was the youngest of the 48 artists, which included Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Peter Blake and Henry Moore.

The exhibition originated at the Hayward Gallery in London and then toured galleries in England, Wales, Scotland and Belgium.

Scherman returned to Toronto in 1976 with his wife, British artist Margaret Priest.

He was soon recognized as an emerging artist with a growing international presence.

Scherman was a sessional instructor at the University of Guelph Department of Fine Art and an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture in the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1987, he was one of 48 Canadian artists commissioned by the Cineplex Odeon Corporation for works to be installed in cinema complexes in Canada and the United States.

His 5.18 metre wide painting The Comfort of Food was installed at the Cinemas in Oakbrook a suburb of Chicago.

Scherman was part of the competition team for the Toronto public commission Cloud Gardens in the 1990s.

His Macbeth paintings from the mid-1990s were given the series title Banquo’s Funeral.

While Banquo was murdered in Shakespeare’s play, the funeral was not written in.

Curator Karen Antaki wrote: “Scherman suspends the…narrative frame and proceeds to invent his own meta-text and to plot its wayward course.”

In the late 1990s, Scherman addressed the social and political upheaval of the French Revolution, which he titled About 1789.

As with his mythology and literature sources, Scherman created a meta-text through images in order to present a visual language beyond dramatic moments.

A related exhibition Unthinkable Thoughts, with a focus on works on paper, circulated to galleries in Canada in 2004-2007.

In 2005, Scherman was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Scherman died from cancer on February, 28, 2023, at the age of 72.

Scherman’s work considers the human condition in paintings and works on paper that are done in thematic series.

These visual investigations are drawn from the mythologies of antiquity, the narratives and characters of the Shakespearean tragedies, Hamlet and Macbeth, and historical events that have formed and shaped the world today.

Scherman, however, does not rely on illustrating dramatic moments, a characteristic of history painting, but employs a range of subject matter—portraits, animals, flowers and food—as stand-ins and visual metaphor, and imagining what is not written.

His painting Poseidon, 2007, is featured on the cover of Dr. Gerald Cupchik's book The Aesthetics of Emotion, Up the Down Staircase of the Mind-Body.

Scherman’s 2007 historical painting series addressed the American Civil War.

Critic Lilly Wei wrote that Scherman chose the conflict because “it was the first war fought on moral terms…an ethical war and a necessary work, premised on the belief that slavery was a non-negotiable evil.” As with his previous series, there are portraits, animals and food and imagined moments; several works are titled “The Dreams of Robert E. Lee." Lee was the commander of the Confederate States Army.

Portraiture has been a critical aspect of Tony Scherman’s painting series.

In 2015, Scherman was commissioned by Western University to paint the portrait of former Chancellor Joseph Rotman.