Part 2

The architect was jesting. Puvis de Chavannes betook himself to a corner of his studio, and unrolling two canvases, presented them to M. Diot:

"Here are what you want. These two pictures are of the same dimensions as _Peace_ and _War_; they represent _Repose_ and _Labour_ and form part of the same series. Will they serve your purpose?"

They served the architect's purpose to perfection. Unfortunately the city of Amiens did not have the money to pay for them. The difficulty was explained to the artist who, with his customary disinterestedness, made a present of both the paintings. They were soon stretched in the places for which they were intended, in a framework of fruits and flowers, and produced an admirable effect. The municipality of Amiens was so well satisfied with these paintings that it decided at the cost of great sacrifices to commission Puvis de Chavannes to prepare a large composition destined to occupy the entire upper panel of the staircase on the side of the grand gallery. This panel was intersected by two doorways.

Puvis de Chavannes set to work immediately. In the Salon of 1865 he exhibited his _Ave Picardia Nutrix_, destined for the Museum of Amiens.

The painting produced a veritable sensation. Even the unskilled in art experienced an instinctive emotion in the presence of this important canvas which they did not fully understand, but which they felt to be sincere; as to the artists, they were obliged to acknowledge that the painter whom they had scoffed and derided, and who had now produced the _Picardia Nutrix_, was unquestionably a master.

The _Ave Picardia Nutrix_ is a glorification of the fertility and richness of the land of Picardy. The artist has wished to represent in a succession of episodes, harmoniously related one to another, all the products of the soil and all the local industries from which Picardy draws its prosperity.

To this end he has grouped his figures in the setting of a Picardian landscape, quite faithful in colour and in line. M. Marius Vachon analyzes the painting as follows:

"Beneath the orchard of a vast estate some peasants are turning a flour mill; women are bringing apples for a keg of cider; masons are building the walls of a house, and an old woman is spinning on her distaff the native hemp. Along the banks of a stream, women are weaving fish nets; carpenters are constructing a bridge; boatmen are steering heavy-laden barges. Add to these professional labours the incidents of work-a-day life, which are taking place on every side, charming incidents, picturesque and touching; a little lad, carrying a heavy basket of fruit on his head, eager to show his strength before his elders; a mother, nursing her youngest born; some women bathing under the shadow of the willows. The composition is abundantly suggestive of delicate impressions; and it forms a magnificent decoration for the edifice in which it has been placed."

When the painting had been installed in its position in the vestibule of honour on the main floor, the municipality of Amiens perceived that the fourth side of the staircase, the only one not decorated, was precisely the one that best lent itself to the development of a painting, because of its considerable surface. The ceiling, it is true, darkened this vestibule, owing to its insufficient window space. It was, furthermore, adorned by a painting by Barrias. Nevertheless the city determined to replace the ceiling by a skylight, on condition that Puvis de Chavannes would paint the vacant panel thus made available.

However, the resources of the municipality did not permit it to incur so great an expense. It appealed to the State, which curtly refused its coöperation. The city fathers of Amiens were in despair, the painter not less so. What was to be done? Wait until the municipality, through slow economies, was in a position to order the picture? Puvis de Chavannes, who had grown enthusiastic over the task, was boiling with impatience and listened day by day, as he expressed it, to hear if no breeze was blowing his way from Amiens.

But when the breeze remained persistently unfavourable, Puvis de Chavannes, growing tired of waiting, decided to execute the panel in any case, come what might. And he composed the admirable fresco which bears the name of _Ludus pro Patria_.

Everyone knows the subject of this painting, which has passed into a legend. In a plain traversed by a running stream, some young men are engaged in a game of rivalry with spears. On a knoll, an old man, surrounded by women, serves as umpire. He follows, with attentive eye, the fluctuations of the game, while a young lad, in a pose charming for its relaxation, rests one arm around his neck. Behind him a young woman holds out her baby for its father to kiss. On the left of the picture, seated at the foot of a tree, or grouped around a fountain, young girls await the end of the game in which their brothers or their betrothed take part. One of them leans towards an aged minstrel and begs him to play some dance music after the game is over.

All these groups are harmoniously disposed in an open-air setting, dotted over with cottages and stately trees, enveloped in a soft and mellow light.

This picture reveals the artist's predilection for children, a very curious and touching predilection to discover in a painter whose own fireside was never gladdened by childish laughter. Let us examine the _Ludus pro Patria_; in this picture Puvis de Chavannes has been lavish of childhood games and pastimes. Notwithstanding that his art was before all else synthetic, and gained its effects from harmony of attitude rather than from finish of figures, he plainly expended loving care in modelling those delicate and charming little bodies, which he has endowed with infinite grace. Is there anything more adorably exquisite than the gesture of the infant stretching out its plump arms towards its father? And does not the child standing before the group by the fountain reveal the master's tender solicitude for these little beings whose absence from his domestic life he probably regretted?

The distinguished custodian of the Museum at Amiens showed me the corner of the balustrade on which the painter rested his elbows, in front of the group of which that child forms part. After some moments of contemplation, he might be seen to mount his scaffolding, brush in hand, to add a few strokes, some new tint to that delightfully modelled little form.

The _Ludus pro Patria_ is something more and something better than a beautiful picture; it is a symbolic work in which the noblest conceptions of patriotism are exalted. With his incomparable synthetic art, Puvis de Chavannes has endeavoured to show all the diverse manners of serving usefully one's native land. Young women, bearing the tender burden of nursing children, are rearing for their country a valiant generation, which before long will be augmented through the robust girls grouped on the left, awaiting the advent of husbands. The children, grown to manhood, will practise games of strength and skill which will render them capable of defending their common patrimony. The old man himself has his rôle assigned in this ideal commonwealth; ripened by experience of life, he supplements the feebleness of his arms by the wisdom of his lessons; he is the honoured counsellor, the arbiter of full justice, who restrains the ardor of youth within the path of reason.

The cartoon for this magnificent panel was exhibited in the Salon of 1881; it achieved a unanimous success. The State acquired it, and at the same time commissioned Puvis to paint the picture itself for the Museum of Picardy. The finished work, in its proper dimensions, found a place in the Salon the following year, and gained its author the medal of honour from the Society of French Artists.

We have followed Puvis de Chavannes in his decoration of the Museum of Amiens, from the beginning to the end of his artistic career, without regard to chronological order, because of the interest which he himself took in this extensive work, which was, one might say, his constant preoccupation. Accordingly we must go back in point of time and follow step by step this astonishing and genial worker whose accomplishment is disconcerting in its power and its fecundity.

The first works executed for the Museum of Amiens had attracted public attention to him. The municipality of Marseilles had just crowned the important enterprise of bringing the waters of the Durance into the city, by erecting a sumptuous Public Waterworks, bearing the name of the Palace of Longchamps.

Two great mural surfaces enclose the principal staircase. It was decided to decorate them with paintings. And when the time came to choose the artist, a unanimous agreement was reached on the name of Puvis de Chavannes.

The latter, being notified, accepted joyfully, as he accepted all occasions of converting a noble vision of art into a reality. And what finer fortune could come to an artist that to celebrate Marseilles, the sun-bathed city, vibrant with light, crouching royally on the azure mantle of the Mediterranean?

Puvis de Chavannes hastened to the ancient Ligurian city. He calculated the difficulties of composing a great decorative composition, free from banality, out of the habitual elements of a seaport,--a subject a thousand times treated and perilous of execution. He sought, he studied, he promenaded the quays, he strode the length and breadth of the city. At last the enlightening flash he awaited came in the course of a trip to the Chateau d'If. In the presence of that noble panorama of the city seen from the sea, he remained as if dazed, realizing that he had found what he was in search of. He would not paint Marseilles with the sea as a decorative background; it was the city herself that should form the background, and not the sea. He had his two pictures in his grasp.

And without stirring from the spot, while his friends took luncheon, he remained seated on the rocks, making notes and sketches, in order to fix fully in his mind "the line and colour of that marvellous maritime landscape."

The first of these pictures, _Marseilles the Greek Colony_, stands for the entire history of the Phocian city from its foundation to the present time. But, following his essentially synthetic method, he painted, not the successive transformations of Marseilles, but symbolic figures of the sources to which she owes her grandeur and her prosperity.

In the background is the strand, which as yet is only a natural harbour. Along the shore, vessels are seen building; these are the symbol of activity. Further off, horses are bringing merchandise towards the boats about to sail, symbol of the commercial instinct; masons, carpenters, stonecutters, are zealously plying their craft; and palaces, storehouses, and churches arise, symbols of wealth and of taste in art.

Among the accessory features are a woman vendor spreading before other women rich fabrics and pearls, and some slaves conveying towards the city jars of oil and skins filled with wine.

In _Marseilles, Gateway of the East_, a ship is seen, laden with travellers, making its way into port. All these passengers are Orientals, recognizable by the gaudiness of their garments: they admire the panorama of the rich city whose fortifications, churches, and palaces stand out in bold relief against the ruddy light of evening.

An atmosphere of warmth and brilliance emanates from these two paintings, of which the city of Marseilles has shown herself justly proud.

When Puvis de Chavannes received a commission for a mural painting he gave himself ardently to his task, but at the same time intermittently. Contrary to a generally accepted belief, his genius was not the result of "long patience," but rather the realization of a vision. He never applied himself to a painting if some external cause, no matter what, had deadened in him the essential inspiration. In such a case, he would revert to some other work which his mind could "see better" on that particular day. In this way we can understand how he could carry forward simultaneously several works of equal importance, and at the same time paint in addition occasional easel pictures.

Following the example of Marseilles 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 municipality, 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, passing 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 fêtes 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 documents 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 coarse 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 Panthéon, which had just been once more secularized, in order to convert it into a temple wherein all the shining lights of the nation could be brought together and honoured.

M. de Chennevières, who at that time was director of the Beaux Arts gave the first place, in that illustrious line, to the noble and serene Genevieve, patron saint of Paris, incarnate ideal of patriotism.

Accordingly it was a series of religious paintings that M. de Chennevières 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 Panthéon 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 classed with religious art? One would hesitate to assert 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 noble 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 Panthéon," he wrote, "when I am finished with the Hôtel 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 noble woman who had associated 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 attitude 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 rôle 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 wishing 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 Panthéon, 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 municipal government of that city, wishing 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 shore 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 grass. Euterpe and Thalia, heralded from the sky by song and the accompanying lyre, approach to join the group.

Antiquity, as treated by Puvis de Chavannes, loses nothing of its nobility, but quite the contrary. It even gains in real beauty, because his Muses profit by being despoiled of those conventional attitudes, in which an immutable tradition has trammelled them. The artist has retained only such of their attitudes 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 Saône_, both of which are admirably effective.

To about the same period belongs his well known painting, _The Poor Fisherman_, at present in the Musée 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 Hôtel 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 exactitude 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 grass, nurses her new born child. In this picture Puvis de Chavannes, who was a landscape painter of the first order, has surpassed 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 Hôtel de Ville should for its own credit assign them a place more in keeping with their worth.