Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre (pyĕr püvē` də shävän`), 1824–98, French mural painter, b. Lyons. In 1844 he went to Paris, where he studied under Delacroix and Couture. His painting War (Amiens), purchased by the state in 1861, established his reputation. From that time on he lived in Paris and painted mural decorations there and in other cities. Late in life he married his lifelong friend, Princess Marie Cantacuzène. They both died the following year. Although Puvis studied with the romanticists, his work is classical in inspiration. His chaste murals with their subdued color and allegorical figures are in the Hôtel de Ville, the Sorbonne, and the Panthéon, Paris, and in the Boston Public Library. His easel paintings can be found in many American and European galleries.

Puvis de Chavannes, Pierre (-Cécile)

The Poor Fisherman, oil on canvas by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, 1881; …

(credit: Courtesy of the Musee du Louvre, Paris; photograph, Marc Garanger)

(born Dec. 14, 1824, Lyon, France—died Oct. 24, 1898, Paris) French painter. He studied briefly with Eugène Delacroix in Paris and exhibited regularly at the Paris Salons. He is best known for his large canvas paintings for the walls of public buildings in Paris, including the Pantheon (1874–78, 1893–98), the Sorbonne (1889–91), and the Hôtel de Ville (1891–94), as well as the museum in Amiens (1880–82). He also decorated the staircase of the Boston Public Library (1895–96). His works are usually idealized depictions of antiquity or allegorical representations of abstract themes, in simplified forms and pale, flat, frescolike colours. The leading French mural painter of the later 19th century, he exerted a strong influence on the Post-Impressionists.