Description
This painting is a smaller version of a mural on the same subject painted for the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, which has a companion mural titled Winter. A writer at the time described Summer as "filled with joy, happiness, rest, and the apotheosis of life." Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, and Pablo Picasso were among the many modernists influenced by Puvis de Chavannes’s dreamlike themes and anti-naturalistic style of simplified, flattened forms.
Provenance
Bought from the artist by Durand-Ruel, Paris (stock number 1882), 29 October 1891. (1891-1892); Sold to Durand-Ruel, New York (stock number 864), 5 January 1892. (1892); (Durand-Ruel, New York, NY, January 5, 1892, no. 864.) (1892); (Durand-Ruel, New York, NY, November 16, 1892 sold to Jeptha H. Wade) (1892); Jeptha H. Wade [1811-1980] Cleveland, OH, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art,1916 (1892-1916); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (1916-)
Accession Number
1916.1056
Medium
oil on fabric
Dimensions
Framed: 189.5 x 270.5 x 14.6 cm (74 5/8 x 106 1/2 x 5 3/4 in.); Unframed: 149.6 x 232.4 cm (58 7/8 x 91 1/2 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade
Tags
Painting Impressionist & Modern (1851–1900) Oil Painting French
Background & Context
Background Story
Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898) was a French painter known for his monumental mural paintings of allegorical subjects in the simplified, flat manner that distinguishes his work from the more naturalistic painting of his contemporaries. Summer from 1891 is one of a series of allegorical paintings of the seasons that Puvis de Chavannes produced for decorative schemes throughout his career, depicting the summer season in the simplified, flat manner that distinguishes his best decorative painting. The 1891 date places this in Puvis de Chavannes's late period, when he was producing the simplified, allegorical paintings that would influence the development of Symbolism and early modernism.
Cultural Impact
Summer is important in the history of French painting because it demonstrates the simplified, allegorical manner that Puvis de Chavannes developed as an alternative to naturalistic painting. Puvis de Chavannes's simplified, flat manner would influence the development of Symbolism and early modernism—particularly the flat, decorative manner of Gauguin and the Nabis—and his allegorical subjects represent a type of painting that is simultaneously decorative and philosophical.
Why It Matters
Summer is Puvis de Chavannes's simplified allegory: the summer season rendered in the flat, simplified manner that he developed as an alternative to naturalistic painting. The 1891 painting demonstrates the decorative, philosophical manner that would influence Symbolism, Gauguin, and the Nabis in their development of modernist flat painting.
