Au Clair de la Lune (In the Moonlight), Pierre Puvis de Chavannes

Episode 33 Jun-2005, Anna Smith, Education Intern I’m David Cateforis with another art minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. Despite its title, the painting “Au Clair de la Lune”, French for “By the Light of the Moon,” does not show the moon at all. Instead, the celestial body is evident through its reflection on a distant lake and in the soft sheen on the face of a woman who leans against freshly cut sheaves of summer hay. This ethereal-looking woman seems immersed in contemplation as she drapes her arm languidly over the hay and turns toward the unseen moon. “Au Clair de la Lune” is a mural study by the nineteenth-century French artist Pierre Puvis de Chavannes. Puvis used soft colors laid out in smudgy planes that suggest forms rather than clearly defining them. Puvis painted in this style so that his art would harmonize with the walls it adorned. Thus, he made his figures flat and selected his colors to match the stone of the wall. The pale, golden tones of this study suggest that the finished artwork was meant for a warmly colored wall. The painting serves as an allegory for the summer harvest season-the woman in classical garb lounging on a newly mown haystack as she considers the fleeting beauty of a summer moon. With thanks to Anna Smith for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.