La Source

La Source (The Spring) was painted in 1869 and acquired by the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims. The subject of a figure at or near a spring — drinking, bathing, or simply resting — was a staple of both classical and Romantic painting, and Puvis brought to it his characteristic interest in the relationship between the human body and a primal natural setting. The spring as motif carries associations of fertility, purity, and origins; in Puvis's hands these become elements of a broader meditation on the intimate connections between humanity and landscape that run through all his allegorical work. La Source belongs to the cluster of allegorical canvases he produced around 1869–70, a highly productive period in which he developed many of the compositional formulas — isolated figure in open landscape, muted palette, simplified form — that would serve him for the rest of his career.

Puvis used the spring setting to justify a cool, silvery palette with notes of pale green and watery grey-blue. The figure, likely female, is rendered with the simplified contour drawing characteristic of his mature work, and the surrounding vegetation is indicated through broadly painted tonal masses rather than botanically precise observation.