Puvis de Chavannes Part 2

This painting, admirable in execution, is quite interesting to study, because it serves to show in what a purely personal manner, wholly detached from mythological traditions, Puvis de Chavannes interpreted Antiquity.]

Following the example of Ma.r.s.eilles and Amiens, the city of Poitiers, which in 1872 had just completed the building of a City Hall, commissioned Puvis de Chavannes to decorate the main staircase.

The two subjects chosen by the artist, with the approbation of the munic.i.p.ality, were as follows:

First panel:--"Radegonde, having retired to the Convent of the Holy Cross, offers an asylum to the poets and protects Literature against the barbarism of those days."

Second panel:--"The year 732: Charles Martel saves Christendom by his victory over the Saracens near Poitiers."

The legend of Radegonde is well known: "The virtuous spouse of Clotaire, fleeing from the brutality of that crowned free-booter and hiding in a convent in order to escape his pursuit." But this convent is by no means a cloister; the practice of arts and letters is pursued alternately with the singing of psalms.

The door stands open to poets. One of them, Fortunatus, pa.s.sing through Poitiers, stops there and is received with cordial hospitality, and conceiving for the saintly queen a delicate and chaste love, he remains for twenty years in this abode in which he purposed to spend only a few days.

Puvis de Chavannes has magnificently rendered the poetic beauty of this historic episode by representing one of the fetes given by Radegonde in the Convent of the Holy Cross.

In the second panel, we see Charles Martel returning to Poitiers, victorious over the Saracens and receiving the benediction of the bishops. Here the artist's brush attains a vigour of expression such as in all his life he found but few occasions to employ. The countenances of the bishops, notably, stand out with a relief and an energy that are remarkable.

M. Marius Vachon relates that he once asked the artist, who was a personal friend, to what doc.u.ments he had recourse in order to give such forbidding features to the prelates in his painting:

"I got the suggestion for them," he replied, laughing, "from an old set of chess men, consisting of the coa.r.s.e and grouchy faces of knights and jesters."

THE LAST YEARS

In the days following the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune, the Government conceived the project of decorating the Pantheon, which had just been once more secularized, in order to convert it into a temple wherein all the s.h.i.+ning lights of the nation could be brought together and honoured.

M. de Chennevieres, who at that time was director of the Beaux Arts gave the first place, in that ill.u.s.trious line, to the n.o.ble and serene Genevieve, patron saint of Paris, incarnate ideal of patriotism.

Accordingly it was a series of religious paintings that M. de Chennevieres required of Puvis de Chavannes, when he entrusted him with a large share of the decoration.

This type of painting, although new to Puvis de Chavannes, failed to intimidate him. He had too much patriotic fire, more than enough Christian faith, and above all too thorough a mastery of his profession not to approach this task with full confidence. It is enough to visit the Pantheon just once in order to be convinced of this. A more magnificent realization of Saint Genevieve could not be conceived of, even in dreams. But are these paintings to be cla.s.sed with religious art? One would hesitate to a.s.sert it, if the pictures habitually consecrated to religious themes are to be taken as a standard. But they are something better than that, because the virgin protectress of Paris is in these pictures profoundly human; she is brought very close to us, and we see her despoiled of the aureole that would have removed her too far from our vision and our hearts.

The whole world knows, at least through reproductions, the series of paintings consecrated to the life of this saint. First of all, we have Saint Genevieve as a child, singled out from a crowd by Saint Germain, because she is marked with the divine seal. "I chose the hour," wrote Puvis de Chavannes, "at which history claimed possession of this heroic woman. These two are not an old man and a child, they are two great souls face to face. The glance which they ardently exchange is, in its moral significance, the culminating point of the composition."

Next in order comes the _Piety of Saint Genevieve_. The pious child is at her prayers before a cross formed by two interlacing branches. This is the prologue of a life filled with miracles, divine recompense accorded only to supernatural virtue. The artist has admirably reproduced the mystic fervour of that child whose future was foreordained to be so beautiful.

Subsequently, in 1896, the Government entrusted Puvis de Chavannes with the execution of two new panels, likewise dedicated to the life of Saint Genevieve. The two themes chosen were the following:

"Ardent in her faith and in her charity, Genevieve, whom the greatest perils could not swerve from her duty, brings sustenance to Paris, besieged and threatened with famine."

"Genevieve, sustained by her pious solicitude, keeps watch over sleeping Paris."

These n.o.ble paintings were the last productions of the great artist. A sort of premonition told him that the end was near, in spite of his robust health. "How I shall devote myself to the Pantheon," he wrote, "when I am finished with the Hotel de Ville! I intend it to be a sort of last will and testament."

In these last paintings, Saint Genevieve is no longer a child. Having attained womanhood, her saintliness is such that, from all sides, people come to take shelter behind her veil, like children around their mother, as soon as danger is announced.

For the purpose of portraying this hieratic and inspired figure, Puvis de Chavannes found the ideal model close at hand, in the n.o.ble woman who had a.s.sociated her entire life with his. _Genevieve bringing sustenance to Paris_ is the artist's wife who, already mortally ill, inflicted upon herself the most cruel suffering, in order to pose in her husband's studio. The disease which was killing her was known only to herself, and she had the heroism to conceal it up to the supreme hour when, conquered at last, she was stricken down. In painting the pensive and dolorous att.i.tude of _Genevieve watching over sleeping Paris_, the poor artist never once suspected that he was tracing for the last time the portrait of her who had been the consolation and the joy of his whole existence.

The unfortunate woman lacked the strength to play her role to the end; she was forced to take to her bed. The artist, no less heroic than she, feeling that his own life was slipping away with hers, yet wis.h.i.+ng to complete this last work,--his testament--transported his easel beside the dying woman's bed, and there finished the sketches for his picture.

In the intervals of time between the paintings executed for the Pantheon, Puvis de Chavannes produced certain other large compositions in no wise inferior either in importance or in merit, notably, in 1883, a large painting for the Palace of Arts, at Lyons.

The munic.i.p.al government of that city, wis.h.i.+ng to have the main staircase of the palace decorated, entrusted the execution to the great artist who was at the same time a compatriot. He felt a very special joy in accepting this commission, for he had always retained a vivid memory of the city of his birth.

He endowed it with three pictures of a very high order, one of which, _The Sacred Wood, dear to the Arts and the Muses_, is considered by many to be the artist's masterpiece.

Puvis de Chavannes breaks away from the mythological theme so often treated that it has become hackneyed. It is not on Helicon that he groups his Muses, but on the sh.o.r.e of a lake, in a setting of verdure softly illuminated by the rays of the moon. At the foot of a portico, Calliope is seen declaiming verses before her sisters. Some of the Muses appear attentive; others converse together; one of them is reclining lazily upon the gra.s.s. Euterpe and Thalia, heralded from the sky by song and the accompanying lyre, approach to join the group.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE VII.--LETTERS, SCIENCES AND ARTS (detail)

(In the Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne)

In this immense composition, in which the groups are balanced with admirable harmony, there is an exalted and pervading beauty. It makes itself felt in the prevailing mood of the subject as a whole, in the expressions of the several characters, in the naturalness of their att.i.tudes and in the luminous clarity of the landscape.]

Antiquity, as treated by Puvis de Chavannes, loses nothing of its n.o.bility, but quite the contrary. It even gains in real beauty, because his Muses profit by being despoiled of those conventional att.i.tudes, in which an immutable tradition has trammelled them. The artist has retained only such of their att.i.tudes as cannot detract in any way from the naturalness of their movements or their lines.

In the same Palace of Arts, Puvis de Chavannes painted two additional allegorical panels representing _The Rhone and The Saone_, both of which are admirably effective.

To about the same period belongs his well known painting, _The Poor Fisherman_, at present in the Musee du Luxembourg.

In this work, which he painted as a relaxation from his more extensive efforts, Puvis de Chavannes has tried to portray, as Millet so often did, all the sordid and lamentable misery of the slaves of toil, who bend their poor aching backs beneath the burden of physical distress and mental degradation. This work is a fine and eloquent lesson in humanity.

In 1889, the Hotel de Ville, in Paris, proceeding with the still unfinished decoration of its numerous halls and chambers, entrusted Puvis de Chavannes with the task of decorating the main staircase and the first salon in the suite of reception rooms.

On one wall of this salon, he painted _Winter_, on the other _Summer_.

These two compositions are of imposing dimensions and admirable in execution.

_Winter_ shows us a snow-clad stretch of forest landscape. Woodsmen are hauling the trunks of trees which others of their number have just felled. Nothing could be more impressive than his rendering of the desolation of winter; and the truth, the exact.i.tude of the physical effort these men are putting forth, with every muscle straining tensely on the rope.

_Summer_ shows us a delightful and smiling landscape flooded with light; bathing women plunge their nude forms beneath the water, while a mother, seated on the gra.s.s, nurses her new born child. In this picture Puvis de Chavannes, who was a landscape painter of the first order, has surpa.s.sed himself; the work is a miracle of open air and grateful shade.

Unfortunately, the room in which these two magnificent pictures are placed suffers from a deplorable want of light, and its scanty dimensions make it impossible to stand back at a sufficient distance to see them to advantage. The Hotel de Ville should for its own credit a.s.sign them a place more in keeping with their worth.

For the museum at Rouen, Puvis de Chavannes painted an allegory ent.i.tled _Inter Artes et Naturam_, charming in fantasy and poetic feeling.

According to his habit, he has grouped together in synthetic form the various things which const.i.tute the wealth or serve to mark the characteristics of the province of Normandy.

Labourers heaping up architectural fragments preserved from all the various epochs proclaim the variety and antiquity of its monuments; its special art is represented by a young girl painting a tulip on a porcelain plate and by a lad carrying a tray of pottery; its princ.i.p.al agricultural richness is revealed by the action of a woman, bending down a branch of an apple-tree, in order that her child may reach the fruit.

And at the bottom of the picture flows the Seine, rolling its flood past a long sequence of manufactories, and bearing in its course heavily laden boats.

This picture is one of Puvis de Chavannes' most ingenious conceptions; furthermore, it possesses great charm of detail.

In 1891, the trustees of the Boston Museum approached Puvis de Chavannes with a request to decorate the main staircase of that edifice.

The negotiations were troublesome. In spite of his delight at having a new work to produce, in spite of the legitimate pride he felt in this homage paid to French art, Puvis de Chavannes hesitated to accept the commission. For the first time he faced the necessity of painting a canvas without having studied beforehand the physiognomy, the environment, the illumination of the s.p.a.ce he was to decorate, and his artist's conscience suffered. Besides, certain misunderstandings had arisen between American trustees and the painter; several times relations were on the point of being broken off; and no definite agreement was reached until after the lapse of four years.

Puvis de Chavannes began this work in 1895; he did not finish it until 1898. The surface to be covered was to be divided into nine large panels, three facing the entrance, three to the right, three to the left. The choice of subjects was left to him.