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| Louis Wain: Pirate Pussies, 1901 |
Moonlight in art
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| Hans Baluschek: Illustration for Peterchen’s Trip to the Moon, 1920 |
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| Pierre Puvis de Chavannes: Sleep, 1867-70 oil on canvas, 66,4 x 106 cm The Metropolitan Museum of Art |
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| Pierre Puvis de Chavannes: Au clair de lune, 1885 oil on canvas, 46 x 38,1 cm |
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 lounges on a newly mown haystack as she considers the fleeting beauty of a summer moon. via