The Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Arts and the Muses

The Sacred Grove, Beloved of the Arts and Muses or simply The Sacred Grove, French: Le Bois sacré cher aux arts et aux muses, refers to three separate oil on canvas paintings of the same name by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, a French painter described by Vincent van Gogh as "the master of all of us". The original version commissioned in 1883 was painted from 1884 to 1886, before being mounted to decorate the entry staircase of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon. The original The Sacred Grove is measured to be 460 x 1040 cm large. It is accompanied by two other paintings by Puvis: Vision antique and Inspiration chrétienne which were also oil on canvas and were both completed in 1885. The original piece in Lyon stemmed from a showcase piece which was a smaller painting (93 x 231 cm) exhibited without an explanatory text at the Paris Salon of 1884, where it won that year's grand prize. It acted as a test of The Sacred Grove’s success before the final version was to be displayed in the museum. The original piece acted as inspiration for the third painting, also known as L’Ancienne Sorbonne, which developed the theme of The Sacred Grove. It was commissioned in 1886 (and finished in 1889) for the Grand Amphitheater of the Sorbonne, in Paris. This third piece was part of a Trinity of Republican commissions in Paris including Summer and Winter and L’Education de Sainte Geneviève et La Vie Pastoral de Saint Geneviève. The three works depict a number of deistic figures draped loosely in sheets, surrounding a mythical forest. The paintings’ subject matter much like Puvis’ other works such as Antique Vision are related to Ancient Greek mythology and are stylised as classical pieces. The Sacred Grove of the Paris Salon is currently on display in the European Painting and Sculpture Gallery of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Sacred Grove commissioned for the Sorbonne is being exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, while the other remains in its respective museum in Lyons.