Exceptionelle II
Lot 446:
Description
Keywords: Nabi movement, Symbolist art, French watercolor, early 20th century art, post-Impressionist, Art and Critique, École des Beaux-Arts, Pont-Aven, modernist religious art
Maurice Denis (French, 1870–1943). Watercolor on paper, signed verso.
Maurice Denis (1870–1943) studied at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, where he met Édouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel. Around 1885, he began drawing studies at the Balla studio, and by 1888, he was enrolled in the studios of Lefebvre and Doucet at the École des Beaux-Arts, as well as at the Académie Julian. There, he befriended Pierre Bonnard, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Paul Ranson, and Paul Sérusier—who, influenced by Gauguin, created Le Talisman in Pont-Aven that same year. Together, they founded the Nabis, a group of artists rejecting academic naturalism in favor of symbolic and expressive content.
In 1890, Denis published his influential Definition of Neo-Traditionism in Art et Critique. The following year, he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and with the Nabis at the Barc de Boutteville gallery. His early work includes lithographs for André Gide’s Le Voyage d’Urien (1892–93) and a major decorative commission, The Legend of Saint Hubert (1897), for Baron Denys Cochin’s hôtel in Paris.
Over time, Denis distanced himself from the radicalism of early Nabis art. His travels to Italy (1895, 1897, 1898, 1904) and his visits in 1906 to Provence, where he met Cézanne, Cross, Signac, Valtat, and Renoir, influenced a more classical turn in his work. His theoretical writings, published in Théories (1912), reflect this evolution: From Symbolism and Gauguin Toward a New Classical Order.
Denis taught at the Académie Ranson from 1909 to 1919, and in 1919 co-founded the Ateliers d’Art Sacré with Georges-Olivier Desvallières to train artists in religious decoration. He exhibited regularly at the Salon de la Société Nationale and the Salon des Indépendants. Major commissions include Histoire de la Musique for the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (1912–13) and Histoire des Arts Français for the dome of the Petit Palais (1924–25).
He remained active in both secular and sacred art until his death in 1943.
Inside mat: 5 3/4 x 6 in. (14.6 x 15.2 cm.), Frame: 14 3/4 x 13 in. (37.5 x 33 cm.) approx
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