The Poor Fisherman by Puvis de Chavannes Postcard

The Poor Fisherman by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, oil on canvas 1881, depicts a fisherman in his boat gazing penitently into the water, his wife and infant on the shore behind him. The flat shapes and muted tonal color palette of the vast, seaside landscape recall the compositions of Gauguin. The subject matter of noble, melancholy poverty was common among the Romantic and Symbolist artists of the 19th century, and also was a likely inspiration for later modern art. Puvis painted two known versions of Poor Fisherman, the other being an elongated vertical treatment of the fisherman in his boat. Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824 - 1898) was a French painter and one of the most widely admired and influential artists during the latter 19th century. Puvis studied briefly under Delacroix and Thomas Couture and at the Académie des Beaux Arts before gaining wide recognition exhibiting in the Paris Salon. His many public and private mural commissions canonized Puvis as the "painter for France", bringing many accolades from across the worlds of art and literature. His work is part of the French Symbolist movement, spanning the period between Romanticism and the rise of Modernism. Though Puvis’ reputation has diminished greatly, the artist influenced countless others including Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, and left an unmistakable impression on the 20th century Modernists.