Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre

PUVIS de CHAVANNES, PIERRE. - Painter, b. in Lyon on 14 Dec. 1824, d. in Paris on 24 Oct. 1898.

Raised in an environment dominated by the great personalities of French Romantic painting, he witnessed the triumph of Impressionist theories. Nevertheless his art acquires significance in that, together with that of Gustave Moreau, it can also appear, as in fact it has appeared, a solemn protest against Impressionism.

His paintings in the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, in the Sorbonne, in the Panthéon, like his pictures in the Museums of Amiens, Lyon, Rouen, Marseille, indeed reveal on his part the intention of reasserting the dominion of drawing over colour. And this in compositions painted in juxtaposed tones, at times extremely luminous, which clearly show P. de C.'s study of the art of Piero della Francesca, whom he considered the greatest Italian artist of the Renaissance.

P. de C.'s qualities are essentially those of a great decorative painter. He knows indeed how to instil in his images an idyllic sense of peace and an indisputable nobility of poses and gestures, arranging them with simple harmony within the spaces granted by architecture to pictorial decoration. Thus especially in his paintings in the Paris Panthéon depicting the Stories of St. Elizabeth, which he brought to completion between 1876 and 1898.

Emilio Lavagnino