The philosophical art of Paul Chenavard

Abstract

The article is devoted to the history of the creation of sketches for murals of Pantheon of Paris in 1848 by French painter Paul Chenavard. The work was commissioned by the State in the reign of Louis-Philippe. In the period of the Second Empire these sketches were rejected by fine arts administration of Napoleon III. In the graphic series the painter attempted to imagine the theory of three stages of the development of society in the light of the positivism and in the manner of German “Die Nazarener”. The sketches of Chenavard don’t were transferred to the walls of Pantheon and at present they are kept at the Musée des Beaux-Arts of Lyon. The sketches were an example of the quest for new forms in the monumental decorative art of France, richness of the content and meaningful images. The article quotes opinions of the famous art critics (Ch. Baudelaire, Th. Silvestre, Ch. Blanc, A. Houssaye) and painter’s contemporaries (E. Delacroix, Au. Rodin, E. Zola).