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Study for the Mother in The Fisherman's Family
About the Artwork
This study relates to the figure of the mother in Pierre Puvis de Chavannes's The Fisherman's Family, a painting first shown at the 1875 Paris Salon, and which the artist also painted in reduced scale in 1887. While Puvis represented his female figure completely nude in the study, in the painting he left bare just a breast, shoulder, and arm. The artist derived the mother figure seen in this drawing from an earlier canvas, Summer, purchased by the French state at the 1873 Salon. In this study, the figure retains some naturalistic features smoothed away in the later paintings, as seen in her proper right arm and hand and her collar and cheekbones.
Provenance
?-1945: Adrien Karbowsky [1855-1945], Paris, by descent to his family 1945-?: Family of Adrien Karbowsky, Paris ?-probably 1980: (Galerie Jacques Fischer-Chantal Kiener, Paris, sold to Muriel Butkin, Shaker Heights, OH) Probably 1980-2008: Muriel Butkin [1916-2008], Shaker Heights, OH, by bequest to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH 2008-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
French Master Drawings from the Collection of Muriel Butkin. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 26-October 28, 2001); Dahesh Museum of Art (February 19-May 18, 2002).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (French, 1824–1898)
- Date
- c. 1875
- Medium
- black and white chalk with stumping, squared in black chalk
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 46.6 x 32.8 cm (18 3/8 x 12 15/16 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Bequest of Muriel Butkin
- Accession no.
- 2008.390
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-00011188
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