Autoportrait

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes's 'Autoportrait' (Self-Portrait, 1889) is a rare departure into self-portraiture by the artist who was the most influential muralist of the late nineteenth century — his large-scale decorative works for public buildings across France defining a vision of classical harmony and symbolic figuration that influenced an entire generation including Gauguin, Seurat, and later Matisse. Puvis de Chavannes at 65 was at the height of his reputation, his style fully formed, and his self-portrait would carry the quality of thoughtful introspection appropriate to an artist's self-examination at the peak of a distinguished career.

Puvis de Chavannes renders his own face with a directness that contrasts with the idealized, generalized figures of his decorative works — the self-portrait demanding the specific observation of a particular face rather than the abstracted types of his monumental compositions. His palette in the self-portrait is more naturalistic than in his mural work, the face modeled with observed tonal precision. The self-portrait reveals the man behind the mythological and allegorical visions.