The Carrier Pigeon (1871)

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes: The Carrier Pigeon

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes’ The Carrier Pigeon, the second of what he called his two “real allegories,” also commemorated the siege of Paris through a skillful fusion of journalism and symbolism. It too features a confrontation between Paris and Prussia, Paris in the form of a woman standing on a snow-covered rooftop with the city spread out behind her, clutching a carrier pigeon to her breast, and Prussia in the familiar guise of the threatening black eagle she deflects. The woman lacks the conventional aspects of the city of Paris, and she wears a garment that, if not truly contemporary, is at least reminiscent of the somber mourning clothes worn by real women widowed by the war and siege. Yet the caption Puvis inscribed on the picture’s frame confirms the figure as a personification of the city during that difficult time: “Having escaped from the enemy claw the awaited message exalts the heart of the proud city.” The woman’s defensive interaction with the avian predator is both metaphorical and historically specific, representing a clash between civic and national symbols, and simultaneously documenting the Prussian tactic of using hawks to intercept and kill the messenger pigeons Parisians relied on for communication during the siege. Even the picture’s limited and muted palette serves both a literal and symbolic purpose; the lack of mimetic color distances the image from reality and makes it more emblematic, but it also recalls the tonality of photography and thus evokes the assumed veracity of that medium. [Lisa Small, “L’Année Terrible and Political Imagery,” in Eric Zafran, Robert Rosenblum, Lisa Small, Fantasy and Faith: The Art of Gustave Doré, The Dahesh Museum of Art, pp. 52-53]

The Balloon (1871)

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes: The Balloon

It was while he was on the ramparts of Paris, when the town was besieged by Prussian troops in 1870, that Puvis had the idea for The Balloon. It was completed by the end of November, and immediately distributed through a lithograph by Emile Vernier, reviewed in the press and admired by the intellectual and artistic elite. They encouraged the artist to produce another to match it. The Carrier Pigeon was painted at the beginning of 1871, and again distributed through a lithograph by Vernier.

There are several preparatory drawings and painted sketches (Paris, Musée Carnavalet). But the large paintings are in tones of brown, a fitting colour for the sombre events from which the iconography was drawn. Puvis knew how to avoid the picturesque and dramatic anecdote, so common at the time, and achieve a moving symbol. The paintings echo each other point by point. In The Balloon, a woman with a musket, dressed simply in a severe black dress, turns towards Mount Valérien and waves towards the balloon bearing the news. In The Carrier Pigeon, the same figure in mourning, this time portrayed frontally, collects the carrier pigeon which has escaped the talons of the hawks sent by the enemy. In the distance, the Île de la Cité is buried under the heavy snowfalls of that hard winter.

In 1873-1874, Puvis donated the two paintings to the French government for a lottery in New York organised in aid of victims of a great fire which destroyed Chicago in 1871. But he was very attached to these paintings and subsequently regretted handing them over. During his private exhibition at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in 1887, he even displayed photographs of them to compensate for their absence. [Musée d’Orsay]