Pierre Puvis de Chavannes

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was a French painter in the late 19th century best remembered for his large, public mural paintings throughout France. His flat, muted, figurative style is innately Symbolist, with identifiable—yet obscure—dream-like subject matter. Puvis de Chavannes’ commissioned murals, which often appeared on governmental buildings, are retrospectively thought of as early iterations of democratized art—art that was, essentially, free for the viewer. Art historians often consider his work in the context of the extremely decisive political turmoil in France as the fallout of the French Revolution a century earlier continued to cause upheaval.