Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
1824-1898
French
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes Art Galleries
Born in Lyons on Dec. 14, 1824, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes belonged to the generation of Gustave Courbet and ??douard Manet, and he was fully aware of their revolutionary achievements. Nevertheless, he was drawn to a more traditional and conservative style. From his first involvement with art, which began after a trip to Italy and which interrupted his intention to follow the engineering profession that his father practiced, Puvis pursued his career within the scope of academic classicism and the Salon. Even in this chosen arena, however, he was rejected, particularly during the 1850s. But he gradually won acceptance. By the 1880s he was an established figure in the Salons, and by the 1890s he was their acknowledged master.
In both personal and artistic ways Puvis career was closely linked with the avant-grade. In the years of his growing public recognition, when he began to serve on Salon juries, he was consistently sympathetic to the work of younger, more radical artists. Later, as president of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts - the new Salon, as it was called - he was able to exert even more of a liberalizing influence on the important annual exhibitions.
Puvis 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 But his style eclipsed his outdated subjects: he characteristically worked with broad, simple compositions, and he resisted the dry photographic realism which had begun to typify academic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.
Along with their modern, formal properties, Puvis paintings exhibited a serene and poetic range of feeling. His figures frequently seem to be wrapped in an aura of ritualistic mystery, as though they belong in a private world of dreams or visions. Yet these feelings invariably seem fresh and sincere. This combination of form and feeling deeply appealed to certain avant-garde artists of the 1880s and 1890s. Although Puvis claimed he was neither radical nor revolutionary, he was admired by the symbolist poets, writers, and painters - including Paul Gauguin and Maurice Denis - and he influenced the neoimpressionist painter Georges Seurat.
During his mature career Puvis executed many mural paintings. In Paris he did the Life of St. Genevieve (1874-1878) in the Panth??on and Science, Art, and Letters (1880s) in the Sorbonne. In Lyons he executed the Sacred Grove, the Antique Vision, and Christian Inspiration (1880s) in the Mus??e des Beaux-Arts. He painted Pastoral Poetry (1895-1898) in the Boston Public Library. These commissions reflect the high esteem with which Puvis was regarded during his own lifetime. Among his most celebrated oil paintings are Hope (1872) and the Poor Fisherman (1881). He died in Paris on Oct. 10, 1898. Related Paintings of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes :. | The Beheading of St John the Baptist | The Pigeon | The Poor Fisherman | Woman on the Beach | Young Girls by the Sea | Related Artists: Bernardino indiaItalian Emilian painter , 1528-1590
was a painter of the late Renaissance, born and mainly active in Verona. He is said to have trained with Domenico Riccio. He collaborated with Michele Sanmicheli in the Canossa palace and Pellegrini chapel in San Bernardino of Verona. He collaborated with Felipe Brusasorci, Domenico's son in frescoes at Palazzo Fiorio Della Seta. He decorated Palladian villas such as Villa Pojana, Villa Foscari (also known as La Malcontenta) where Giovanni Battista Zelotti also worked, and the Palazzo Thiene in Vicenza. Orlando Flacco completed his most extensive work for the Sala Maggior di Consiglio in Verona. Gustav BauernfeindGerman Painter, 1848-1904 Jacques Le Moyne de MorguesFrench painter, illustrator and explorer.
c.1533 -1588
French painter, illustrator and explorer, also active in Florida and London. In April 1564 he sailed with Ren? de Laudonni?re as artist of the Huguenot expedition to Florida. In September 1565 the Spaniards overran the colony, but he escaped and returned to France. By c. 1580 he had settled in Blackfriars, London, 'for religion' and received letters of denization on 12 May 1581. He later came into contact with Sir Walter Ralegh and his colonizing circle and with John White, the artist of the first English colony of Virginia, with whom he exchanged ideas and perhaps collaborated. Ralegh commissioned him to illustrate the Florida enterprise, and Le Moyne produced an account Brevis narratio eorum quae in Florida
|