The Wine Press by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes Stone Coaster

The Wine Press by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, 1865, is an oil on canvas painting depicting classical figures gathering and pouring baskets of purple grapes into a large, wooden wine press barrel. The archaic, classical costumes and setting are reminiscent of pastoral, Arcadian scenes from ancient Greece and Italy as previously painted by artists of the Renaissance and Baroque, neo-classical French painters such as Poussin. 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 the Post-Impressionists Degas, Gauguin, and left an unmistakable impression on the early 20th century Modernists.