Tamaris by Puvis de Chavannes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, May 2009

Artist: Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (French, 1824–1898)

Title: Tamaris

Date: ca. 1880

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 10 x 15 1/2 in. (25.4 x 39.4 cm)

Credit Line: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Gift of Mrs. J. Watson Webb, 1930

Accession Number: 30.20


Gallery Label: The small plants with pink blossoms surrounding the reclining nude suggest that the artist intended her to be a personification of the tamarisk, or tamarix, a shrub named after the valley of Tamaris in the Var, in southeastern France. The broad style is characteristic of Puvis about 1880.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/collection_database/europe...