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 But his style eclipsed his outdated subjects: he characteristically worked with broad, simple compositions, and he resisted the dry photographic realism which had begun to typify academic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 :. | Young Girls by the Sea | The Poor Fisherman | Poor fisherman | Summer | Toilette |
Related Artists:
Henry Walton
British Painter , c 1746-1813 He studied in London under Johan Zoffany c. 1769, after which he completed his training at the Maiden Lane Academy. It was probably Zoffany who introduced Walton to the conversation piece, a genre in which he was to specialize. The Cricket Scene at Harrow School (1771; priv. col., see 1963 exh. cat., no. 1) reveals Walton's debt to Zoffany, but it also shows him to be an exceptional colourist and able to compose his figures with a sense of rare warmth and intimacy. By c. 1778, when he painted the Rev. Charles Tyrrell with his Family
Eilif Peterssen
1852-1928 was a Norwegian painter. He attended the of Fredrik Eckersberg in Kristiania (now Oslo) in 1866 and 1870. After that, he studied painting briefly with Knud Bergslien at the Johan Fredrick Eckersberg School of Painting and left to go abroad in 1871. He studied at the School of Art of Copenhagen; in Karlsruhe (1871?C1873), where he was a student of Hans Gude; and, together with Hans Heyerdahl, in Munich under Wilhelm von Diez. He then studied in London, Paris, and Italy. After these travels, he returned to Norway and settled in Bærum. He made his debut at the Høstutstillingen (Autumn Exposition) in Kristiania in 1882. He was a profound connoisseur of European art and was later associated groups such as Lysaker, the painters of Fleskum and those of Skagenpainters, as well as with individual artists like August Eiebakke, Kitty Kielland and Harald Oskar Sohlberg. In Norway, he is also known as the designer of the coat of arms of Norway, adopted when the country separated from Sweden in 1905 to become an independent country. This version was used for official government purposes until 1937, when it was replaced by a new version. Nonetheless, Peterssen's design is still used for the royal coat of arms and for the royal flag. In addition to his canvasses, he collaborated on the decoration of the Tourist Hotel in Holmenkollen in 1889. In the same year, he painted the murals "The Wanderers of Emmaus" in the Church of Tanum in Bærum and "Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane" in the Church of the Cross, Bergen.
Benjamin Champney
(November 20, 1817 - December 11, 1907) was a painter whose name has become synonymous with White Mountain art of the 19th century. He began his training as a lithographer under celebrated marine artist Fitz Henry Lane at Pendleton's Lithography shop in Boston. Most art historians consider him the founder of the "North Conway Colony" of painters who came to North Conway, New Hampshire and the surrounding area during the second half of the 19th century. His paintings were often used to make chromolithographs that were subsequently sold to tourists who could not afford Champney's originals. He exhibited regularly at the Boston Athenæum and was a founder of the Boston Art Club