France, 19th century / 1891
Summer
The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogs Summer as painting (France, 19th century · 1891).
Puvis de Chavannes was considered one of the foremost artists in France in the second half of the 1800, and was particularly admired for his murals. This painting is a version of a mural he painted in 1889, which was particularly difficult because the wall had a door in the middle.
A CLOSER LOOK
The museum identifies this painting as oil on fabric and credits Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (French, 1824–1898).
The museum's collection notes: 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.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
The Cleveland Museum of ArtSummerOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.