Page 23 - Studio International - May 1972

Puvis de Chavannes Le Doux Pays 1882
Puvis de Chavannes
and French symbolist painting Oil on canvas, glued to the wall
Coll : Musée Bonnat, Bayonne

Brian Petrie

`Moi, mystique !! Qu'en pensez-vous ?' asked a
bewildered Puvis de Chavannes in a letter of
1888.1 His situation was like that of Moliere's
M. Jourdain, when told that he had been
speaking prose all his life—except that the
revelation, in this case, was that he had been
speaking, not prose, but ... well, let the
egregious Sâr Péladan speak: 'The time has
come to render homage before this triply
significant work,2 at once Theodicy, Science
and Volupté 2. Like Redon and like Moreau,
who were also at pains to dissociate themselves
from any literary or philosophic pretentions,
Puvis was overtaken by events. If one accepts,
though only as a convenient convention, the
date 1886, when Moréas published his
manifesto, as the year when the symbolist
movement in France got under way, then it is
worth noting that in that year Puvis was
sixty-two years old, Moreau sixty, Redon
forty-six. There was, in fact, a French be acceptable for its kitschiness but High attitudes of that class, is undeniable. But he
`symbolist' painting long before there was a Seriousness, especially if unsupported by a presents these attitudes without dogmatism. His
`French Symbolist Movement'. It was the complex ideology, is still felt to be in bad taste, work demonstrates that such ambitions are not
independent creation of three painters who have it is not a statement likely to command necessarily inconsistent with imagination,
little in common beyond the fact that, firstly, immediate acquiescence. We are, not without genuine feeling and individual lyricism. It is
they were (or in Puvis' case merely began as) cause, resistant to the idea of art as a vehicle for oddly appropriate that Le Doux Pays,9 one of
latter-day romantics for whom it was almost as if institutional values. There is also a tendency to the most representative of his decorative works,
the realist and naturalist schools had never been, prefer the worm to the bud. Although Puvis's was done to embellish the stairwell in the Paris
and who, secondly, found themselves hailed, work is not an art for philistines, his is home of that pillar of the artistic establishment,
belatedly, by a generation in reaction against nonetheless a bourgeois art. The institutional his friend Léon Bonnat. Puvis's irritation at being
Naturalism and all it stood for. context in which it is seen—the public buildings attributed 'mystical' qualities was a reflection
This summer works by Redon, Moreau and of the République conservatrice—and the artistic of his professionalism as an artist, a
Puvis de Chavannes form the nucleus of company he keeps therein,5 not only deprive professionalism which first envisaged in precise
an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery devoted Puvis's most characteristic works of the terms the effects it sought, and then set out to
to French Symbolism. One thing that may hygienically controlled and edited environment achieve them in a painterly language both
emerge is whether their work has an appeal to in which we usually encounter non- sensitive and unambiguous. But his annoyance
lovers of painting, as well as to intellectuals contemporary art, but may through association was no doubt also a function of his character,
and to devotees of the grotesque and the actively hinder our appreciation. In fact the and his distaste for arty cant.
fantastic. One may also hope that Puvis will be setting of his works has made him a martyr of Nevertheless the affinities which many
seen to take his rightful place beside the two the academicism / avant-garde polarity. And this symbolists felt to exist between their aspirations
better-known masters. Perhaps the exhibition despite the fact that it is in situ, in the and Puvis's works deserve consideration. They
will help us, too, to see how far we are begging architectural contexts for which he designed his are not entirely figments of Sâr Péladan's10
the question in calling Puvis a 'symbolist' at all. murals, to the particular contingencies of which or Theodor de Wyzéwa's11 imagination. To see
Is the word not too tendentious in its he made great efforts to adapt his work, and Puvis through the admiring eyes of
implications ? which, generically, largely conditioned his contemporaries like Gauguin, Van Gogh, Rodin
Puvis de Chavannes devoted his career, stylistic innovations, that his work makes most or Redon is not only informative about the
which coincides neatly enough with the second sense. Furthermore, the style itself is reticent. attitudes of these artists to their own work; it
half of the nineteenth century,3 to the These 'anaemic panoramas'6 are well-mannered. also reveals the inadequacy of the academicism /
development of a pictorial style whose They are the work of the personage represented avant-garde polarity as a basis for the
competent, common sense, professional and in Rodin's bust of 1891, the gentleman who was consideration of Puvis himself. In a period of
independent aesthetic is put at the service of a upset by the sculptor's first rendering, in heroic revolt against naturalism, both academic and
conscientiously but independently conceived nudity. Rodin succumbed, and the figure impressionist,12 Puvis's idealism, his ability to
public ethic. He is the only French mural acquired a frock-coat and wing-collar before it paint allegory without pedantry and history
painter of his time (unless we accept the appeared at the salon.? without an excessively archaeological bias already
proposition that Gauguin was a muralist It would in fact be false to try to rescue Puvis took him some way towards the symbolists'
manqué), whose work still has claims on our by arguing that he was entirely out of place position. But the positive virtue of his work,
attention by virtue of its intrinsic merit. This among the official artists of the period. That he for the symbolists, was one which we can still
is a point worth emphasising,4 though in the was bourgeois,8 and in his art embodied the appreciate. What they liked to call the artist's
present climate, where bad Victorian art may conventional patriotic, religious, and historical état d'â'me, and we might call his individual