Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre (1824-1898)
L’été (Summer)
1891
Oil on fabric, 149.6 x 232.4 cm
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland
Puvis de Chavannes was considered one of the foremost artists in France in the second half of the 1800, and was particularly admired for his murals. This painting is a version of a mural he painted in 1889, which was particularly difficult because the wall had a door in the middle. This painting is a smaller version of a mural on the same subject painted for the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, which has a companion mural titled Winter. A writer at the time described Summer as “filled with joy, happiness, rest, and the apotheosis of life.” Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, and Pablo Picasso were among the many modernists influenced by Puvis de Chavannes’s dreamlike themes and anti-naturalistic style of simplified, flattened forms. (CMA)
Compare:
Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre (1824-1898)
L’été
before 1873
National Gallery, London
Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre (1824-1898)
L’été
1873
Musée d’Orsay, Paris