PIERRE PUVIS DE CHAVANNES | Sketch for Summer : The Bath

Camille Jordan, the artist's nephew, Paris ;
Thence by descent

Puvis de Chavannes et la peinture lyonnaise du XIXe siècle, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, 1937, n°40, with wrong dimensions ;
Marie-Christine Boucher, Catalogue des dessins et peintures de Puvis de Chavannes, Musée du Petit Palais, Paris, 1979, mentioned pp. 22-24 ;
Puvis de Chavannes. Une voie singulière au siècle de l'Impressionnisme, Musée de Picardie, Amiens, November 2005 - March 2006, n°86

Aimée Brown Price, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes; catalogue raisonné of the painted work, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 98, Cat. 128

- relined ; - a certain number of small retouches scattered on the surface - a repaint in the sky by a cloud - some retouches on the woman seated on the right (left thigh, left arm, belly; the black surrounding outline have been reinforced in some places) ; very good overall condition.
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Born in 1824 in Lyon, Puvis de Chavannes trained with Henry Scheffer, Eugène Delacroix and Thomas Couture. However he was mostly influenced by Théodore Chassériau during his career and especially for his frieze-like décors with nudes and drapery. The latter brought him international fame, and in 1891 he received a commission for the Boston Public Library, which he completed in 1896.  Executed around 1864-65, our painting is a study for the right part of his first large wall painting Ave Picardia Nutrix, set in the main staircase of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Amiens. Every gesture and position was studied carefully in several sketches and drawings. Our study differs from the final version completed in 1865. Bathers were a common subject matter in nineteenth-century painting, such as Chassériau's Vénus Anadyomène from 1838 that the painter had been able to admire at the Louvre.

Puvis de Chavannes painted an innocent Arcadia, a leitmotive in his work. A whole generation of painters will be influenced by his style, very personal and modern. For instance, Matisse pays homage to his style in Luxe, Calme et Volupté (Musée Georges Pompidou, Paris): the young woman on the right is reminiscent of the female nude standing in our painting (see illustration below).