Background
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was born on December 14, 1824 in Lyon, Rhone, France. He was the son of a mining engineer.
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was born on December 14, 1824 in Lyon, Rhone, France. He was the son of a mining engineer.
Puvis de Chavannes studied at the Amiens College and at the Lycée Henri IV in Paris.
His first teacher of art was Eugène Delacroix, who closed his studio shortly afterwards due to ill health. Puvis went on to study art under the guidance of Henri Scheffer and Thomas Couture.
The painter also attended anatomy classes at the Académie des Beaux Arts.
In 1852 Pierre established himself in a studio in the Place Pigalle (which he did not give up till 1897), and there organized a sort of academy for a group of fellow students, who wished to work from the living model.
Puvis first exhibited in the Salon of-1850 a "Pieta", and in the same year he painted "Mademoiselle de Sombreuil Drinking a Glass of Blood to Save her Father" and "Jean Cavalier by his Mother's Deathbed". In 1852 and in the two following years Puvis's pictures were rejected by the Salon, and were sent to a private exhibition in the Galeries Bonne Nouvelle. The public laughed at his work as loudly as at that of Courbet, but the young painter was none the less warmly defended by Theophile Gautier and Theodore de Banville.
In 1857 he painted "Martyrdom of St Sebastian", "Meditation", "Village Firemen", "Julie", "Herodias" and "Saint Camilla" — 22 compositions showing a great variety of impulse, still undecided in style and reflecting the influence of the Italian masters as well as of Delacroix and Couture.
Two years later, in 1859, Puvis reappeared in the Salon with the "Return from Hunting" (now in the Marseilles Gallery).
In 1876 the Department of Fine Arts in Paris gave the artist a commission to paint "Saint Genevieve giving Food to Paris" and "Saint Genevieve watching over Sleeping Paris" in which he gave to the saint the features of Princess Cantacuzene, his wife, who died not long before he did.
In 1879 the painter executed the cartoon of "Ludus pro patria", exhibited in the Salon of 1881 and purchased by the state, which at the same time gave him a commission for the finished work. While toiling at these large works, Puvis de Chavannes rested himself by painting easel pictures.
It was in the same mood of inspiration by the antique that he painted the hemicycle at the Sorbonne, an allegory of "Science, Art, and Letters", a work of great extent, for which he was paid 35, 000 francs (£1400).
After prolonged negotiations, begun so early as in 1891, with the trustees of the Boston Library, United States, Puvis de Chavannes accepted a commission to paint nine large panels for that building, to be inserted in separate compartments, three facing the door, three to the right and three to the left. These pictures were finished in 1898. In these works of his latest period Puvis de Chavannes soars boldly above realistic vision.
Puvis's impact on the history of art would be difficult to overstate. His aspiration to escape reality and turn inward - toward dreams, mythology, and the imagination - inspired the Post-Impressionists.
His most famous works are "Death and the Maiden", "The Dream" and "The Poor Fisherman".
Pierre also was a co-founder of Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts.
The Balloon
Children in an Orchard
Bellum, War
Cider
St. Genevieve as a Child in Prayer
Meditation
Homer: Epic Poetry
Daphnis and Chloe
St. Genevieve Bringing Supplies to the City of Paris after the Siege
The Birds
The Beheading of St. John the Baptist
Orpheus
The Beheading of St. John the Baptist
Patriotic Games
Life of St. Genevieve
The Prodigal Son 2
The Happy Land
Allegory of Charity
Allegory of Life
Study of a Standing Male Nude
Hope
Fresco for the decoration of the Pantheon: saints
Christian Inspiration
Summer (detail)
Summer (detail)
Pity
The Bathers
Death and the Maidens
The Penitent Magdalen
The Song of the Shepherd
Young Girls by the Sea
Between Art and Nature (detail)
Work
Greek Colony, Marseille
The Village Firemen
The Prodigal Son
The Childhood of Saint Genevieve
Woman by the Sea
Sleeping
Charity
Study for Four Figures in Rest
Chromolithograph Poster
The Rest
The Keeper of Goats
Thomas-Alfred Jones
St. Genevieve makes confidence and calm to frightened Parisians of the approach of Attila
A Maid Combing a Woman's Hair
Autumn
The Toilette
The Dream: "In his sleep he Saw Love, Glory and Wealth Appear to Him"
Mary Magdalene in the Desert
Tamaris (detail)
Winter
Between Art and Nature
Fresco for the decoration of the Pantheon: saints
Summer
Young Girls on the Edge of the Sea
Fresco for the decoration of the Pantheon: saints (detail)
Summer
The Sacred Wood Cherished by the Arts and the Muses
Hope
The River
The Poor Fisherman
The Sacred Wood Cherished by the Arts and the Muses (detail)
Marseilles, Gate to the Orient (detail)
The Sacred Wood Cherished by the Arts and the Muses (detail)
Puvis's sympathy to new and radical artistic directions was reflected in his own painting. Superficially he was a classicist, but his personal interpretation of that style was unconventional. His subject matter — religious themes, allegories, mythologies, and historical events —was clearly in keeping with the academic tradition. But his style eclipsed his outdated subjects: he characteristically worked with broad, simple compositions, and he resisted the dry photographic realism which had begun to typify academic painting about the end of the century. In addition, the space and figures in his paintings inclined toward flatness, calling attention to the surface on which the images were depicted. These qualities gave his work a modern, abstract look and distinguished it from the sterile tradition to which it might otherwise have been linked.
Since 1856, Pierre was in a relationship with the Romanian princess, Marie Cantacuzène. They were together for 40 years and were married before their deaths in 1898.
