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Lot Essay
Claire Denis will include these tiles in her forthcoming Denis catalogue raisonné.
Maurice Denis executed these tiles as prototypes for the decoration of a sideboard located in his dining room in Le Prieuré in Saint-Germain en Laye. Although these particular tiles were not used in the final work, altogether thirty-two such tiles were placed on top of the sideboard.
The subject of the tiles Jeux d'enfants was dedicated to the artist's then two-year-old daughter, Bernadette, who is shown in various scenes playing with a cat. She was born in 1899, suggesting a date of the present tiles and the sideboard, as Claire Frèches-Thory has pointed out, of about 1900-1902. The style of these intimate works clearly recalls Denis's earlier work as a Nabi. The palette is reduced to essentially three colours: ochre, blue, and red. The ceramics are arranged in such a way that the narrative tiles are separated by others showing just a blue lozenge, the leitmotif of the series, which Denis used in other works, such as La cuisinière, of 1893 (private collection).
Jeux-d'enfants was not the first sideboard that the artist had embellished with ceramics. Previously, in 1898, he had decorated in a similar fashion another sideboard, together with the ceramicist Georges Rasetti (1851-1938), for his friend the musician Ernest Chausson (1855-1899). Today that work is in the Musée du Prieuré. Though Denis's collaborator on Jeux-d'enfants is not documented, Dominique Maurice-Denis has suggested that it was the ceramicist André Metthey, with whom the artist made several vases thereafter.
The tiles are a wonderful example of Denis's sense of decoration and his interest, in common with all the Nabis, in art playing a greater role in and a strong impact on daily life.
(Fig. 1) Maurice Denis, Jeux d'enfants (Buffet décoré de céramiques), circa 1900-1902. Private collection.
©ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2006
Maurice Denis executed these tiles as prototypes for the decoration of a sideboard located in his dining room in Le Prieuré in Saint-Germain en Laye. Although these particular tiles were not used in the final work, altogether thirty-two such tiles were placed on top of the sideboard.
The subject of the tiles Jeux d'enfants was dedicated to the artist's then two-year-old daughter, Bernadette, who is shown in various scenes playing with a cat. She was born in 1899, suggesting a date of the present tiles and the sideboard, as Claire Frèches-Thory has pointed out, of about 1900-1902. The style of these intimate works clearly recalls Denis's earlier work as a Nabi. The palette is reduced to essentially three colours: ochre, blue, and red. The ceramics are arranged in such a way that the narrative tiles are separated by others showing just a blue lozenge, the leitmotif of the series, which Denis used in other works, such as La cuisinière, of 1893 (private collection).
Jeux-d'enfants was not the first sideboard that the artist had embellished with ceramics. Previously, in 1898, he had decorated in a similar fashion another sideboard, together with the ceramicist Georges Rasetti (1851-1938), for his friend the musician Ernest Chausson (1855-1899). Today that work is in the Musée du Prieuré. Though Denis's collaborator on Jeux-d'enfants is not documented, Dominique Maurice-Denis has suggested that it was the ceramicist André Metthey, with whom the artist made several vases thereafter.
The tiles are a wonderful example of Denis's sense of decoration and his interest, in common with all the Nabis, in art playing a greater role in and a strong impact on daily life.
(Fig. 1) Maurice Denis, Jeux d'enfants (Buffet décoré de céramiques), circa 1900-1902. Private collection.
©ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2006