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Lot Essay
Claire Denis and Fabienne Stahl will include this work in their forthcoming Denis catalogue raisonné.
Denis studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, and through fellow student Paul Sérusier learned of the innovative stylistic movement developed by Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard in Pont-Aven in the summer of 1888. With Sérusier and a number of like-minded contemporaries at the Académie Julian such as Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and others, Denis found himself fundamentally opposed to the naturalism recommended by his academic teachers. They formed the Nabis, an artistic brotherhood dedicated to a form of pictorial Symbolism based loosely on the synthetic innovations of Gauguin and Bernard. Their bold experiments in flat paint application and anti-naturalistic color prefigured later abstract initiatives. A gifted writer, Denis's first article, "Définition du néo-traditionnisme," published in Art et critique in 1890, served almost as a group manifesto, and his tireless proselytizing was crucial to the development of the Nabis' early patronage.
One of the Nabis’ major ambitions was to subvert the academic hierarchy separating fine arts from the decorative arts and thus reunite art and craft. References to Japanese art were very much in vogue towards the end of the 1880s which was a perfect match with the Nabis goals, as there was little distinction between the fine arts and decorative arts. Siegfried Bing’s publication Le Japon artistique was particularly influential with its full-color reproductions of seventeenth and eighteenth century Japanese decorative panels and screens. While Denis’ contemporaries Bonnard and Vuillard created numerous such decorative screens, there are only two recorded works done by Denis. The present panel depicts a statue of the Virgin and Child in a snow covered garden at a convent in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. This garden appears again in a panel in the first screen he made, Paravent aux colombes (fig. 2) which the artist retained for his personal use in his home. Denis's rhythmic orchestration of trees in Jardin du couvent is also reminiscent of the artist’s use of trees to arrange the composition in the large, decorative panel in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Les Muses (fig. 1).
(fig. 1) Maurice Denis, Paravent aux colombes, circa 1896. Private collection, Paris.
(fig. 2) Maurice Denis, Les Muses, 1893. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Denis studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian, and through fellow student Paul Sérusier learned of the innovative stylistic movement developed by Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard in Pont-Aven in the summer of 1888. With Sérusier and a number of like-minded contemporaries at the Académie Julian such as Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and others, Denis found himself fundamentally opposed to the naturalism recommended by his academic teachers. They formed the Nabis, an artistic brotherhood dedicated to a form of pictorial Symbolism based loosely on the synthetic innovations of Gauguin and Bernard. Their bold experiments in flat paint application and anti-naturalistic color prefigured later abstract initiatives. A gifted writer, Denis's first article, "Définition du néo-traditionnisme," published in Art et critique in 1890, served almost as a group manifesto, and his tireless proselytizing was crucial to the development of the Nabis' early patronage.
One of the Nabis’ major ambitions was to subvert the academic hierarchy separating fine arts from the decorative arts and thus reunite art and craft. References to Japanese art were very much in vogue towards the end of the 1880s which was a perfect match with the Nabis goals, as there was little distinction between the fine arts and decorative arts. Siegfried Bing’s publication Le Japon artistique was particularly influential with its full-color reproductions of seventeenth and eighteenth century Japanese decorative panels and screens. While Denis’ contemporaries Bonnard and Vuillard created numerous such decorative screens, there are only two recorded works done by Denis. The present panel depicts a statue of the Virgin and Child in a snow covered garden at a convent in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. This garden appears again in a panel in the first screen he made, Paravent aux colombes (fig. 2) which the artist retained for his personal use in his home. Denis's rhythmic orchestration of trees in Jardin du couvent is also reminiscent of the artist’s use of trees to arrange the composition in the large, decorative panel in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay, Les Muses (fig. 1).
(fig. 1) Maurice Denis, Paravent aux colombes, circa 1896. Private collection, Paris.
(fig. 2) Maurice Denis, Les Muses, 1893. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.