By the end of the nineteenth century, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes was among the best known and most praised French artists. The fame of his murals made him a great public figure, with all the association with convention this implies. Over time this "official" persona obscured Puvis's truly innovative contributions. With Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot he was at the foundation of French progressive painting, distancing himself from his subjects through poetic homogenization in a way that would attract Paul Cézanne, and introducing the harmonious and blurred pictorial effect that would profoundly influence Paul Gauguin and the Symbolists. This is one of two companion paintings that are reduced versions of Puvis's large murals shown first in 1861. The historical vagueness of the subjects is intentional: War takes place in some general Northern Druidic/Gallic time, while the other painting, Peace, seems to move closer to the Mediterranean and a golden age of eternal youth. Through his tremendously subtle and understated use of color and ability to retain a graceful unity within a complex design, Puvis lifted decorative painting to a new level. Joseph J. Rishel, from Philadelphia Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections (1995), p. 191.