Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was a French Symbolism artist who lived from 1824 to 1898 who is mostly remembered for his mural work. He was born to a relatively wealthy family with an old noble heritage. After his schooling, Chavannes was intending to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a mining engineer. After a sickness led him to spend some time in Italy, he returned to France in 1846 with a desire to become an artist.
Although Pierre Puvis de Chavannes studied with the Romanticists artists of his day, including Eugène Delacroix and Thomas Couture, overall, he was mostly self-taught. He preferred to work alone and in his own style, regardless of what was popular. In 1850, he had his first piece displayed at the prominent Paris Salon, but it was his mural work that really established his career. From the 1860s onward, Chavannes painted murals for a number of public and private spaces, where his signature classical aesthetic was formed. After the Franco-Prussian War, his mural work helped to restore the moral of France. His paintings still adorn many of these spaces today, and that is why he is remembered as the “painter of France”.
After the French government purchased one of his pieces in 1887, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes became quite famous. In 1890, he became the president and co-founder of the revitalization of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, one of the dominant salons of Paris during the nineteenth century. Chavannes is regarded as being one of the leaders of the Symbolist art movement and helped to inspire a slew of young artists, including Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Robert Genin.
He had an affair with one of his models and fellow artist, Suzanne Valadon, for a short time (Valadon was one of Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s favorite models) before beginning a 40-year relationship with Marie Cantacuzène, a Romanian princess who modeled for him and was his main confidant regarding his art. Chavannes’s colors were more muted, and his figures more simplified, which was an important step in the transition from representational to abstract art. Chavannes died in 1898 at 73 years of age.
Back to the Artists page.
You can learn about different art movements here.
