Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes
Paintings
The Poet
Inter Artes Et Naturam. Between Art And Nature
St. Mary Magdalene in the Desert
St. Mary Magdalene in the desert, detail
Drawings
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Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (14 December 1824 – 24 October 1898) was a French painter, who became the co-founder and president of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and whose work influenced many other artists. Though his reputation has since declined, he was a prominent painter in the early Third Republic. Émile Zola described his work as "an art made of reason, passion, and will".[1]
Life
He was born Pierre-Cécile Puvis in a suburb of Lyon, France, the son of a mining engineer, descendant of an old noble family of Burgundy, and later added the ancestral 'de Chavannes' to his name. Throughout his life however he spurned his Lyon origins, preferring to identify himself with the 'strong' blood of the Burgundians, from where his father originated.[2] Pierre Puvis was educated at the Amiens College and at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris, and was intended to follow his father's profession when a serious illness interrupted his studies . He was compelled to convalesce at Mâcon with his brother and sister-in-law in 1844 and 1845. A journey to Italy opened his mind to fresh ideas, and on his return to Paris in 1846 he announced his intention to become a painter,. He went to study first under Eugène Delacroix (very briefly, as Delacroix closed his studio shortly afterwards due to ill health), Henri Scheffer, and then under Thomas Couture.[3][4] His training was not classical as he found that he preferred to work alone. He took a large studio near the Gare de Lyon and attended anatomy classes at the Académie des Beaux Arts.[5] It was not until a number of years later, when the government of France acquired one of his works, that he gained wide recognition.
He made his Salon debut in 1850 with Dead Christ, Negro Boy, The Reading Lesson, and Portrait of a Man.
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.
Work
The Wine Press , 1865, The Phillips Collection
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, particularly the works of the Modernists. One of his protégés was Georges de Feure.
Mural Work
Young Girls by the Seaside (1887)
Puvis de Chavannes is best known for his mural painting, and he came to be known as 'the painter for France', despite his present relative obscurity. His first commission was for his brother's chateau, Le Brouchy, which is a medieval-style structure near Cuiseaux in Saône-et-Loire. The principal decorations take the four seasons as their theme.[6] His first public commissions came early in the 1860s, with work at the Musée de Picardie at Amiens. The first four works were Concordia (1861), Bellum (1861), Le Travail (Work; 1863) and Le Repos (Rest; 1863).
The Regions
Over the course of his career, Puvis received a substantial number of commissions for works to be carried out in public and private institutions throughout France. His early work at the Musée de Picardie had helped him to develop his classicizing style, and the decorative aesthetic of his mural works.
Among his public works are the later cycles completed at Amiens (Ave Picardia Nutrix, 1865), at Marseille, at Lyon and at Poitiers. Of particular importance is the cycle at the Palais de Beaux Arts in Lyon, which includes three significant works, filling the wall space in the main staircase. From left to right, the works are Antique Vision (1884), The Wood Dear to the Arts and the Muses (1884), and Christian Inspiration (1884).
Paris
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Fantasy, Ohara Museum of Art
Puvis's career was tied up with a complicated debate that had been ongoing since the beginning of the Third Republic (1870), and at the end of the violence of the Paris Commune. The question at stake was the identity of France and the meaning of 'Frenchness'. Royalists felt that the revolution of 1789 had been an immense disaster and that France had been thrown off course, while the Republicans felt that the Revolution had allowed France to revert to its true course. Consequently, works that were to be displayed in public spaces, such as murals, had the important task of fulfilling the ideology of the commissioning party. Many scholars of Puvis's works have noted that his success as a 'painter for France' was largely due to his ability to create works which were agreeable to the many ideologies in existence at this time.
His first Parisian commission was for a cycle at the church of Saint Genevieve, which is now the secular Pantheon, begun in 1874. His two subjects were L'Education de Sainte Geneviève and La Vie Pastoral de Sainte Geneviève. This commission was followed by works at the Sorbonne, namely the enormous hemicycle, The Sacred Grove or L'Ancienne Sorbonne amongst the muses in the Grand Amphitheater of the Sorbonne.
His final commission in this trinity of Republican commissions was the crowning glory of Puvis's career, the works Summer and Winter, at the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall) in Paris.
Many of these works are characterized by their nod to classical art, visible in the careful balanced compositions, and the subject matter is frequently a direct reference to visions of Hellenistic Greece, particularly in the case of Antique Vision.
Works on Canvas
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes - Marseilles, Gateway to the Orient
Puvis de Chavannes was president and co-founder in 1890 of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts (National Society of Fine Arts) founded in Paris. It became the dominant salon of art at the time and held exhibitions of contemporary art that was selected only by a jury composed of the officers of the Société.
Those who translated best the spirit of the work of Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes' in their own creations were, in Germany, the painter Ludwig von Hofmann[7] and in France, Auguste Rodin.[8][full citation needed]
His easel paintings also may be found in many American and European galleries. Some of these paintings are,
Death and the Maiden
The Dream
The Poor Fisherman, 1881, oil on canvas
Vigilance
The Meditation
Mary Magdalene at Saint Baume
Saint Genoveva
Young Girls at the Seaside, 1887, oil on canvas
Mad Woman at the Edge of the Sea
Hope
Hope (nude)
Kneeling nude woman, viewed from back
The Sacred Grove
Puvis de Chavannes prize
Beginning in 1926, The Prix Puvis de Chavannes (Puvis de Chavannes prize) was awarded by the National Society of Fine Arts (Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts). The Prix Puvis de Chavannes is the retrospective exhibition in Paris of the main works of the artist awarded the prize that year. During the twentieth century, this exhibition was located at the Grand Palais or the Musée d'Art Moderne.
The most famous painters who have been awarded the prize are, 1941: Wilhem Van Hasselt, 1944: Jean Gabriel Domergue, 1952: Tristan Klingsor, 1955: Georges Delplanque, 1957: Albert Decaris, 1958: Jean Picard Le Doux, 1963: Maurice Boitel,[9] 1966: Pierre Gaillardot, 1968: Pierre-Henry, 1969: Louis Vuillermoz, 1970: Daniel du Janerand, 1971: Jean-Pierre Alaux; 1975: Jean Monneret; 1987: André Hambourg; 1991: Gaston Sébire; 1993: Jean Cluseau-Lanauve; 2006: Paul Collomb .[10]
References and sources
References
Shaw, J.L., 'Frenchness, Memory and Abstraction: The Case of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes' in Hargrove, J., & McWilliam, N., eds., 2005, Nationalism and French Visual Culture, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Distributed by Yale University Press, New Haven and London, p. 153
Brown Price, A., 2010, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Vol. 1, The Artist and his Art, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 7
Frantz 1911
"Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre". New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
Brown Price 2010
Brown Price, A., 2010, V1, p. 26
[1] (German) (English) (Portuguese)
The study Poemas e pedras, by Rita Rios, São Paulo, (2011).
Home page of Maurice Boitel[dead link]
Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Biennale 1991, Grand Palais, année du centenaire, catalogue pages 8 and 9
Sources
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Frantz, Henri (1911). "Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre Cécile". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Further reading
Shaw, Jennifer L., 2002, Dream States: Puvis De Chavannes, Modernism, and the Fantasy of France, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-08382-3
Brown Price, A., ed. 1994. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes [Exhibition Catalogue, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam], New York: Rizzoli
Brown Price, A., 2010, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, 2 vols, New Haven and London : Yale University Press
Levin, M.R., 1986, Republican Art and Ideology in Late Nineteenth Century France, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press
Robinson, W.H., 1991, ‘Puvis de Chavannes’s ‘Summer’ and the Symbolist Avant-Garde’, The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Jan.) pp. 2–27
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