Pierre Puvis de Chavannes

Auguste Rodin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rodin neither selected his male and female sitters in the same way, nor approached them in the same way artistically. For the most part, he chose male subjects for their achievement and character, his female sitters for their beauty or sensuality. Of the many painters who made Paris the great center of artistic creativity that it was in the second half of the nineteenth century, the two whom Rodin most respected were Eugène Carrière and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. In the matter of portraiture, Puvis proved no less difficult than some of Rodin's other friends. The painter was, in fact, very upset with the first, bare-chested bust that Rodin modeled in 1880, at the commission of the French Ministry of Fine Arts, and he was less than happy with the clothed version. Years later Rodin would say "Puvis de Chavannes did not like my bust of him…He thought that I had caricatured him. And yet I am certain that I have expressed in my sculpture all the enthusiasm and veneration that I felt for him."

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art