KEITH CHRISTIANSEN: Alison Hokanson:

ALISON HOKANSON: This is “The Shepherd's Song” by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, and the first thing that I would like you to do is look closely at the surface of the painting. It's dry. It's chalky. It has a very muted, matte color that is very different from the other oil paintings that you'll see in our galleries, and this stems from the fact that Puvis was imitating the appearance of Antique and Renaissance frescos, while working in oil on canvas.

KEITH CHRISTIANSEN: Puvis renewed and transformed the Renaissance tradition of mural painting. He decorated scores of public buildings in France—including the staircases of some major museums—and in these scenes, he showed expansive pastoral visions that explore allegorical and historical themes. This painting is based on one of those murals in the Fine Arts Museum of Lyons. It presents a vision of Ancient Greece.

ALISON HOKANSON: Here, as in the mural, the assembled figures don't relate to one another in a clear narrative. Instead, they have a remote, or a detached, an almost floating quality of something seen in a dream. They're very clearly the creation of the artist's imagination.

KEITH CHRISTIANSEN: This approach distinguished Puvis from most other 19th century painters, for example, the Realists and Impressionists, who sought to portray contemporary experience.

ALISON HOKANSON: But Puvis was also a very successful artist. And his flat, decorative style, with its simplicity of line and of form, was admired by some of the era's most important artists. Men like Seurat, Gauguin, Picasso all looked to and greatly admired Puvis.