In the midst of the most stormy period that France has seen for ten years, in the turbulence of political and national tumult, Puvis de Chavannes passed from his country’s life into its history. During the week that saw the fall of the Brisson Ministry, when Paris was a sea of frantic demonstration and safety assured by military law, he died: his life a gospel of serenity and peace, his genius and its expressions a glory to his people, an inspiration to present and future Art. At once his character stands out with the marvellous distinctness all things assume when they first become the past, on the first morrow in which we look back to them as yesterday. The death of this great frescoist and painter leaves a place unfilled. He has had no equal, no predecessor, and his successor is not easy to name. To produce this original genius, whose grandiose, sublime, yet simple productions appeal not only to the artist and the critic, but to the peasant, who stands long and enthralled before the Ste. Geneviève of the Panthéon, is the creation of half a century, and due to peculiar circumstances of time and race. He was a great man as well as a great painter; his temperament full of sun and humour, his soul calm and of crystalline clearness. Puvis de Chavannes was born in Lyons in 1824, of an old Bourguignonne family, the warmth and glory of Burgundy in his veins; he was of vigorous physique, of gay and sanguine temperament, attached by a subtle lien to the school which for six centuries has produced great painters, great sculptors and dreamers. Puvis de Chavannes went to school as a boy at the Lycée of Lyons, later to the Lycée Henri Quatre in Paris. He was a painter by selection; had partially fitted himself for a scientific profession, when after careful consideration he deliberately chose the career of a painter. From the moment of his decision he never wavered, but gave to the province of art he had made his own the absolute devotion of the enthusiast, the fierce unremitting toil of which only great genius is capable. His student life began in the studio of [Illustration: RHÔNE ET SAÔNE (Lyons)] Couture, and lasted but three months. The methods in the atelier were uncongenial to him. “Is _that_ the way you see the model?” he asked of Couture, whose formula of _blanc d’argent_, _jaune de Naples_, vermilion and cobalt produced on the canvas a very different effect to that which Puvis de Chavannes recognised. He left the place and never returned, but continued to paint for several years under Henri Schaffer.