COVER N. 525 - FRANCE

Postmark: Pierre Puvis de Chavannes 1824-1898 Premier Jour 69 Lyon 25.10.2024 

Posted on the 25th October; Received on the 29th October 2024

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Un grand Merci, Eric, for another great First Day Cover, this time dedicated to a French painter who although not as resounding as those which made the first decades of the 20th century a true collectors' cards album, for he belonged to the precedent artistic generation, left his mark on many a public building not only in France but also elsewhere in the world.

Culture... in its many forms. Art... the precipitate of Man's existence... what's left after we have all gone... our intimate imprint as a society, our offer to the universe, should we ever make contact with other forms of life...

That's why it is so important to celebrate it and its creators. Some have spent lives of incredible hardship only to now fill the pockets of those that see in art nothing but "an asset"; some have managed to make do with the fruits of their hard work; some even have made it extremely well in their lifetime... but they all are or will one day be gone too, and what will be left is their sublime work.

Such as the huge canvases Pierre Puvis de Chavannes has painted for Marseille's Museum of Arts, which I had the pleasure of admiring in loco, or any of his other majestic paintings in the Pantheon, Sorbonne or the Library of Boston.

Born in 1824, in Lyon, and deceased in Paris, in 1898, Puvis de Chavannes would only climb the stairs of reconnaissance and admiration after a first success in 1961, when after several unsuccessful participations in the Salon de Peinture et de Sculpture, the French State bought his painting Concordia which can now be seen in the Musée de Picardie, in Amiens. So enthralled was the painter by his success that he offered France the companion work, Bellum, so as not to disrupt the conceptual link between the two paintings, allegories for War (Bellum) and Peace (Concordia).

On the occasion of the bicentenary of his birth, la Poste issued on 25OCT2024 the 2,58€ stamp on the cover, illustrated with a detail of his painting Le Bois sacré cher aux arts et aux muses, which decorates the monumental staircase hall of the Musée de Beaux-Arts de Lyon.

It should be noted that Puvis de Chavannes produced three versions of this painting, the other two being an original much smaller study, created in 1864 which won that year's Salon grand prize  and  residing currently at the Art Institute of Chicago and a large painting originally destined for the Sorbonne, finished in 1889 and which can now be seen at the Met in New York.

Fittingly, the First Day postmark was issued at Puis de Chavanne's birthplace, the city of Lyon.