Pierre PUVIS de CHAVANNES (Lyon, 1824 - Paris, 1898) Project for Ludus Pro Patria, circa 1879-1880 Brush and quill pen on black pencil lines on silk canvas, mounted on stretcher. Titled and signed lower left: "project for the painting of the Picards P. Puvis de Chavannes". (Slightly insolated). 28,6 x 121,5 cm (stretcher : 29,6 x 122,1 cm) Provenance: - Anonymous sale, Hôtel Drouot, April 11, 1921, no. 83, reproduced (sold for 6,600 francs to "Le Garrec"). - Former collection of Maurice Le Garrec (1881-1937). - Galerie Sagot-Le Garrec, Paris. Bibliography: - Louise d'Argencourt, Puvis de Chavannes, cat. exp.Paris, Grand Palais, 1976, p. 169. - Marie-Christine Boucher, Catalogue des dessins et peintures de Puvis de Chavannes, Paris, Musée du Petit Palais, 1979, p. 74. - Aimée Brown-Price, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Catalogue raisonné of the Painted Work, Yale, 2010, p. 237, cat. 268. After the exhibition of the Young Picards Practicing with a Spear at the 1880 Salon, the State commissioned Puvis to execute the decoration on the north wall of the stairwell of the Musée de Picardie, opposite Ave Picardia Nutrix. The gigantic size of the final work (4.50 x 17.50 m) makes the whole decoration a total work, symbolic of Puvis' art. The etymology of the word Picard comes from "the long pikes that the people of Picardy usually carried in war" (see: L. d'Argencourt, op. cit., p. 167). When it was inaugurated in 1888, it became Ludus Pro Patria, or the "Game for the Fatherland," and the subject was in fact a reference to the revenge hoped for against the Germans after the 1870 war and the amputation of Alsace-Lorraine. In this first project, the main themes of the final work are already present; a number of anecdotal characters will disappear little by little with each version or will be treated differently, which confirms Puvis' essentially plastic vision. This is the case of the woman waving a cloth or some of the children on the right side of the work. Some groups will also be reversed, the evocation of the family moving from the right side to the opposite side. A progressive spacing will also air the composition in three distinct groups. Only the central group of young men training with the spear will remain more or less the same in the successive versions, while being refocused. In spite of the modifications that will be made to the first project, the spirit and balance are already present. The decor is conceived and perceived as an appeal to patriotism, and it will become one of the most admired works of Puvis at the end of the 19th century for its modern and aesthetic qualities by personalities as diverse as Péladan, Zola, Vuillard or Maurice Denis. The drawing we present differs somewhat from the final painting and probably precedes the large drawing in the Musée d'Orsay (RF 1742) and the cardboard box from the 1888 Salon (Brussels, Royal Museums of Art and History) (see: A. Brown-Price, op. cit., nos. 268-269-270).