Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre-Cécil

(1824-1898)

   painter

   Born in lyon, Pierre-Cécil Puvis de Chavannes worked in the studios of various artists, including eugène delacroix. He admired the work of jean-AUGUSTE-DOMINGUE INGRES, THÉODORE CHASSÉREAU, and the Renaissance fresco painters, defending their idealist views and making him the heir to the Naza-renes, a group of German artists who reacted to neo-classicism and academic style. Puvis de Chavannes began exhibiting in 1850, but he was kept out of the Salon until 1858. He then produced a great series of mural compositions on allegorical themes for the museums of Amiens (1865, 1867, 1879), Lyon (1884), Rouen, and for the sorbonne (Le Bois sacré, 1880-89) and the Panthéon (Sainte Geneviève veillant sur Paris, 1898). Painted in pale colors and linear rhythms, his noble and saintly subjects do not exclude a sense of sentimentalism (Le pauvre Pècheur, 1881). His work, while still showing aspects of the academic tradition, was admired by paul gauguin, who drew stylistic lessons from Puvis de Cha-vannes's linearism, symbolic conceptions, and sense of composition.