Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Tamaris [c.1886-8

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Tamaris [c.1886-8 , a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The small plants with pink blossoms surrounding the reclining nude suggest that the artist intended her to be a personification of the tamarisk, or tamarix, a shrub named after the valley of Tamaris in the Var, in southeastern France. The broad style is characteristic of Puvis about 1886.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 25.4 x 39.4 cm]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Inter Artes et Naturam (Between Art andNature)

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Inter Artes et Naturam (Between Art and Nature) , a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

The growth of Puvis's reputation as a decorative painter was aided by his practice of exhibiting smaller versions of the mural-size works that he painted for public buildings throughout France. Inter Artes et Naturam is a reduced replica of the central panel of a triptych painted for the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, in 1888–91. The artist chose the program, basing it on the museum's collections of antiquities and locally produced ceramics and pottery. The scene shows men excavating classical architectural fragments, and women decorating pottery on the hillside of Bonsecours, a suburb of Rouen. In the distance are the Seine and a panoramic view of the city.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 40.3 x 113.7 cm]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - War [1867]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - War [1867], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This is one of two companion paintings that are reduced versions of Puvis' large murals shown first in 1861. The historical vagueness of the subjects is intentional: War takes place in some general Northern Druidic/Gallic time, while the other painting, Peace, seems to move closer to the Mediterranean and a golden age of eternal youth. Through his tremendously subtle and understated use of colour and ability to retain a graceful unity within a complex design, Puvis lifted decorative painting to a new level.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 109.5 x 149.2 cm]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Peace [1867]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Peace [1867], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

This painting depicts the societal advantages of peace played out in an idyllic landscape, where antique figures rest or engage in pleasant tasks, milking goats or collecting fruit. The image of bounty is drawn from descriptions in Virgil’s fourth Eclogue of a golden age, a harmonious future when “unbidden, the goats will bring home their udders swollen with milk.” This is a reduced version of a much larger picture from Puvis’ first public mural project, which comprised four allegories of human states, including War, Work, and Repose, acquired by the French government to decorate the Musée de Napoléon in Amiens, France.

[Philadelphia Museum of Art - Oil on canvas, 108.9 x 148.6 cm]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - The Prodigal Son [c.1879]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - The Prodigal Son [c.1879], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[National Gallery of Art, Washington - Oil on linen, 106.5 x 146.7 cm]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Cider [c.1864]

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

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

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]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Rest [c.1863]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Rest [c.1863], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

[Oil on canvas, 108.5 x 148 cm]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Work [c.1863]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Work [c.1863], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (December 14, 1824 – October 24, 1898) was a French painter, who became the president and co-founder of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts and whose work influenced many other artists. He was born Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes in Lyon, Rhone, France, the son of a mining engineer, descendant of an old family of Burgundy. In Montmartre, he had an affair with one of his models, Suzanne Valadon, who would become one of the leading artists of the day as well as the mother, teacher, and mentor of Maurice Utrillo. His work is seen as symbolist in nature, even though he studied with some of the romanticists, and he is credited with influencing an entire generation of painters and sculptors.

[Oil on canvas, 108.5 x 148 cm]

Pierre-Cecille Puvis de Chavannes - Summer [before 1873]

Pierre-Cecille Puvis de Chavannes - Summer [before 1873], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Puvis de Chavannes (1824 – 1898) was widely admired in his day for the grandeur and decorative subtlety of his large-scale, multi-figure compositions of allegorical subjects. This image of utopian dream represents Summer, and is also known as The Harvest. It is a preliminary study for one such monumental painting dated 1873, which was bought by the French government at the 1873 Salon and now hangs in the entrance hall of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Puvis had difficulties in deciding on the right number of figures and there are major changes between the study and the finished painting, which is dominated by the landscape.

[Oil on canvas, 43.2 x 62.2 cm]

Pierre-Cecille Puvis de Chavannes - The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist [c.1869]

Pierre-Cecille Puvis de Chavannes - The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist [c.1869], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

The episode is taken from the New Testament. Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee, entranced by Salome's dancing, offers her the object of her wishes. At the prompting of her mother, Herodias, she requests the head of John the Baptist on a plate. Salome's features are here thought to be based on those of the Princess Cantacuzène, who married Puvis de Chavannes in 1897. The figure of Herod standing on the right may be based on the novelist Anatole France. 

The cross which Saint John the Baptist holds as the executioner prepares to strike is the focus of the composition. The static character of the design is mitigated by the figure of the executioner, recalling comparable figures in Delacroix and Chassériau. Probably unfinished, this painting remained with the painter until the time of his death. A related composition is now in the Barber Institute in Birmingham.

[Oil on canvas, 243.5 x 318.4 cm]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Woman on the Beach [1887]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Woman on the Beach [1887], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Please click artist label for further information.

[Oil on paper pasted on canvas, 75.3 x 74.5 cm]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Hope

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Hope [c.1872]

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (December 14, 1824 – October 24, 1898) was a French painter, who became the president and co-founder of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts and whose work influenced many other artists. He was born Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes in Lyon, Rhone, France, the son of a mining engineer, descendant of an old family of Burgundy. In Montmartre, he had an affair with one of his models, Suzanne Valadon, who would become one of the leading artists of the day as well as the mother, teacher, and mentor of Maurice Utrillo. His work is seen as symbolist in nature, even though he studied with some of the romanticists, and he is credited with influencing an entire generation of painters and sculptors.