Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - The River [c.1864]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - The River [c.1864], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

In a career that spanned fifty years, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes played a seminal role in the resurgence of mural painting in France during the nineteenth century. His first decorative paintings, War and Peace, exhibited at the Salon of 1861, led to the 1864 commissioning of the monumental mural Ave Picardia Nutrix (Hail, Picardy the Nourisher) for a large stairwell in the newly constructed Musée de Picardie in Amiens. Cider and The River, respectively, are studies for the left and right sides of the mural.

Cider and The River present an idealised vision of Picardy's distant past, and their subjects would have resonated particularly in the 1860s, a time when each region of France was rediscovering its unique history, character, and culture as part of a broader movement toward decentralisation.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on paper, laid down on canvas, 129.5 x 252.1 cm]