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Summer
About the Artwork
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.
Inscriptions
Signed lower left: P. Puvis de Chavannes / 91
Provenance
1891-1892: Bought from the artist by Durand-Ruel, Paris (stock number 1882), 29 October 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) 1892-1916: Jeptha H. Wade [1811-1980] Cleveland, OH, gifted to the Cleveland Museum of Art,1916 1916-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
The Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 26-October 4, 1936). French Drawings and Watercolors from French Public and Private Collections. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (January 6-February 15, 1942). 19th and 20th Century French Art and Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Loans. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 22-September 1, 1943). 35th Anniversary Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 20-September 30, 1951). Puvis de Chavannes: Public and Private Works. Van Gogh Museum (organizer) (February 25-May 29, 1994). Verso l'Arte Moderna, da Puvis de Chavannes a Matisse e Picasso. Palazzo Grassi spa, 30124 Venice, Italy (organizer) (February 10-June 16, 2002). Monet to Dalí: Modern Masters from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (October 21, 2007-January 13, 2008). Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA (organizer) (June 20-September 3, 2012).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (French, 1824–1898)
- Date
- 1891
- 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.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Wade
- Accession no.
- 1916.1056
More by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00009201
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