PUVIS DE CHAVANNES, PIERRE CECILE (1824 1898), French painter, was born at Lyons on Dec. 14, His father was a mining engineer, the descendant of an old family of Burgundy. Pierre Puvis was educated at the Lyons College and at the Lycee Henri IV. in Paris, and was intended to follow his father's profession when a serious illness interrupted his studies. A journey to Italy opened his mind to fresh ideas, and on his return to France he went to study painting first under Henri Scheffer, and then under Couture. In 1852 he established him self in a studio in the Place Pigalle (which he did not give up till 1897), and there organized a sort of academy for a group of fellow students who wished to work from the living model. Puvis first exhibited in the Salon of 185o a "Pieta." In 1852 and in the following years Puvis's pictures were rejected by the Salon, but the young painter was none the less warmly defended by Theophile Gautier and Theodore de Banville. His composi tions at this early period show great variety, reflecting the in fluence of the Italian masters as well as of Delacroix and Couture. In 1859 Puvis reappeared in the Salon with the "Return from Hunting" (now in the Marseilles Gallery). But not till he pro duced "Peace" and "War" did he really impress his critics, in augurating a vast series of decorative paintings. For these two works a second-class medal was awarded to him. In 1864 he ex hibited "Autumn" and "Sleep." One of these pictures is now in the Lyons Museum, and the other at Lille. "Peace" and "War" were placed in the great gallery of the museum at Amiens, where Puvis completed their effect by painting four panels—a "Standard-Bearer," "Woman Weeping over the Ruins of her Home," a "Reaper," and a "Woman Spinning." Further decora tions were ordered for the same building, and the artist presented to the city of Amiens "Labour" and "Repose." In 1865 a com position entitled "Ave Picardia Nutrix," allegorical of the fertility of the province, was added to the collection. In 1879 the city wished to complete the decoration of the building, and the painter executed the cartoon of "Ludes pro patria," exhibited in the Salon of 1881 and purchased by the state, which at the same time gave him a commission for the finished work. Meanwhile Puvis de Chavannes also painted easel pictures. To the Salon of 1870 he had sent a picture called "Harvest"; the "Beheading of John the Baptist" figured in the Great Exhibition of 1889; then followed "Hope" (1872), the "Family of Fisher-Folk" (1875), and "Women on the Seashore" (1879). Two paintings in the Palais Longchamp at Marseilles, ordered in 1867, represent "Marseilles as a Greek Colony" and "Marseilles, the Emporium of the East." After these, Puvis executed for the town-hall of Poitiers two decorative paintings of historical subjects: "Rade gund," and "Charles Martel." The Pantheon in Paris also possesses a decorative work of great interest by this painter : "The Life of Saint Genevieve," treated in three panels. In 1876
the Department of Fine Arts in Paris gave the artist a com mission to paint "Saint Genevieve giving Food to Paris" and "Saint Genevieve watching over Sleeping Paris," in which he gave to the saint the features of Princess Cantacuzene, his wife. At the time of his death—on Oct. 24, 1898—the work was almost finished. After completing the first paintings in the Pantheon, which occupied him for three years and eight months, Puvis de Chavannes undertook to paint the staircase leading to the gallery of fine arts in the Lyons Museum, and took for his subjects the "Vision of the Antique," a procession of youths on horseback, which a female figure standing on a knoll points out to Pheidias; the "Sacred Grove"; and two allegorical figures of "The Rhone" and "The SaOne." It was in the same mood of inspiration by the antique that he painted the hemicycle at the Sorbonne, an allegory of "Science, Art, and Letters." At the Hotel de Ville in Paris, Puvis decorated the grand staircase and the first reception-room These works occupied him from 1889 till 1893. In the reception room he painted two panels, "Winter" and "Summer." The pic tures in the Rouen Museum (189o-1892) show the artist's power of conceiving a scheme to decorate a public building with beauti ful human figures and the lines of landscape. Puvis, as a rule, adhered to the presentment of the nude; here, however, in re sponse to some critical remarks, he has clad his figures in modern dress. After prolonged negotiations, begun so early as in 1891, with the trustees of the Boston Library, U.S.A., Puvis de Cha vannes accepted a commission to paint nine large panels for that building. These pictures, begun in 1895, were finished in 1898. In these works of his latest period Puvis de Chavannes soars boldly above realism. Puvis de Chavannes was president of the National Society of Fine Arts (the New Salon). His principal pupils are Ary Renan (d. 190o), Baudouin, J. F. Auburtin and Cottet.
See Marius Vachon, Puvis de Chavannes (19oo) ; J. Buisson, "Puvis de Chavannes, Souvenirs Intimes," Gazette des beaux-arts (1899) ; L. Riotor, Les Arts et les Lettres (19c1) ; A. Michel, Puvis de Chavannes (London 1912). (H. FR.; X.) PUY, a geological term used locally in Auvergne for a volcanic hill. Most of the puys of central France are small cinder-cones, with or without associated lava, whilst others are domes of tra chytic rock, like the domite of the Puy-de-DOme. The puys may be scattered as isolated hills, or, as is more usual, clustered to gether, sometimes in lines. They probably became extinct in late prehistoric time. Puys are also found in the Eifel, on the Bay of Naples, in the Swabian Alps of Wurttemberg, and, as Sir A. Geikie has shown, in Scotland.