MAURICE DENIS (1870-1943)
MAURICE DENIS (1870-1943)
MAURICE DENIS (1870-1943)
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MAURICE DENIS (1870-1943)
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THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE EUROPEAN COLLECTOR
MAURICE DENIS (1870-1943)

Avril ou Les anémones

Details
MAURICE DENIS (1870-1943)
Avril ou Les anémones
signed and dated ‘MAVDENIS 91’ (lower right); inscribed ‘AVRIL’ (upper left)
oil on canvas
26 3⁄8 x 31 ¼ in. (67 x 79.5 cm.)
Painted in 1891
Provenance
Arsène Alexandre, Paris, by whom acquired directly from the artist in 1891; his sale, Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, 18-19 May 1903, lot 25.
Maurice Fabre, Narbonne & Paris, by whom acquired at the above sale.
Josse & Gaston Bernheim, Paris.
Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, by whom acquired from the above in 1908.
Léonce Rosenberg, Paris, by whom acquired from the above on 24 November 1910.
Adolphe Stoclet, Brussels, circa 1910-1911.
Raymonde Feron (née Stoclet), Brussels, by descent from the above and until at least 1962.
Private collection, Belgium.
C.G. Boerner, New York.
Acquired from the above on 8 February 2007, and thence by descent to the present owner.
Literature
J. Meier-Graefe, Entwicklungsgeschichte der modernen Kunst, vol. I, Stuttgart, 1904, p. 361.
P. Jamot, Maurice Denis, Paris, 1945, p. 44.
U. Perruchi-Petri, Die Nabis und Japan: Das Frühwerk von Bonnard, Vuillard und Denis, Munich, 1976, pp. 169 & 170 (illustrated fig. 113, p. 168).
J.-P. Bouillon, 'Le moment symboliste' in Revue de l’Art, no. 96, 1992, p. 7 (illustrated on the cover).
A. Gruson, ‘Le Saint-Germain de Maurice Denis’ in Saint-Germain Magazine, December 1992, no. 229, p. 35 (illustrated).
Exh. cat., Maurice Denis, Ghent, 1994, p. 119 (illustrated).
A. Terrasse, Maurice Denis, Lausanne, 1995, pp. 30, 50 & 52
‘Eclosion d’un art nouveau: Maurice Denis, pureté de la ligne et pureté des sentiments’ in Le Nouvelliste, Supplement, 7 December 2010, p. 12 (illustrated).
Exhibited
Paris, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Exposition Maurice Denis, April 1907 (ex. cat).
Zurich, Künstlerhaus, Französische Impressionisten VIII. Serie, October - November 1908, no. 48.
Düsseldorf, Städtischen Kunstpalast, Ausstellung des Sonderbundes Westdeutscher Kunstfreunde und Künstler, July - October 1910, no. 29, p. 20 (illustrated).
Paris, Petit Palais, Les maîtres de l’art indépendant, 1895-1937, June - October 1937, no. 24, p. 52.
Brussels, Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Le groupe des XX et son temps, February - April 1962, no. 23; this exhibition later travelled to Otterlo, Kröller-Müller Museum, April - June 1962.
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Nabis, 1888-1900, Bonnard, Vuillard, Maurice Denis, Vallotton..., May - August 1993, no. 33, p. 144 (illustrated p. 145); this exhibition later travelled to Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, September 1993 - January 1994.
Paris, Musée d’Orsay, Maurice Denis, October 2006 - January 2007, no. 19, p. 134 (illustrated p. 135); this exhibition later travelled to Montreal, Musée des beaux-arts, February - May 2007 and Rovereto, Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea, June - September 2007.
Zug, Kunsthaus, Das Sehen sehen, Neoimpressionismus und moderne, Signac bis Eliasson, February - June 2008, p. 218 (illustrated p. 109).
Martigny, Fondation Pierre Gianadda, de Renoir à Sam Szafran, Parcours d’un collectionneur, December 2010 - June 2011, no. 29, pp. 72 & 267 (illustrated p. 73).
Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum, Snapshot. Painters and Photographers, Bonnard to Vuillard, October 2011 - January 2012, no. 82, pp. 123 & 224 (illustrated p. 123).
Giverny, Musée des Impressionnismes, Maurice Denis, L'Éternel printemps, April - July 2012, no. 11, p. 75 (illustrated).
Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, The Avant-Gardes of Fin-de-Siècle Paris: Signac, Bonnard, Redon, and their contemporaries, September 2013 - January 2014 (illustrated p. 15).
Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum, Fin-de Siècle, May - September 2017, p. 19; this exhibition later travelled to Columbus, Museum of Art, October 2017 - January 2018.
Montreal, Musée des beaux-arts, Paris au temps du post impressionnisme, Signac et les Indépendants, March - September 2020, no. 317, p. 210 (illustrated p. 209).
Lausanne, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Maurice Denis, Amour, February - May 2021, no. 16, p. 93 (illustrated p. 92).
Further Details
Claire Denis and Fabienne Stahl will include this work in their forthcoming Denis catalogue raisonné.

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Anna Touzin
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Lot Essay

As a young man, Maurice Denis often went strolling in the forests surrounding Saint-Germain-en-Laye, the commune northwest of Paris where he grew up. He took pleasure in the trees’ geometries and colours, writing in his journal of ‘a delightful part…where the crooked, twisted, tall, bushy, spaced out, some yellow, others green or grey. To an artist’s eye, it is so beautiful it makes you faint…’ (quoted in Maurice Denis: 1870-1943, exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, 1994, p. 119) This landscape would provide the setting for several of Denis’ important early paintings including Jeu de volant (Musée d’Orsay, Paris) as well as the present work, Avril or Les anémones.
In this idealised image, Denis has painted the forest using natural colours and ornamental pointillism to render the space dreamlike. A sinuous path curves through the dense wood. Branches curl in every direction and the word 'Avril' can be seen carved into the trunk on the lefthand side. In the foreground, a young girl picks white blossoms. Behind, the same woman, now dressed in white, kneels on the ground. In the background, a couple is silhouetted against the trees. Together the figures represent a romantic visualisation of a life, from childhood through to marriage. Painted when Denis was only twenty years, Avril already encapsulates several themes that would remain central to his practice throughout his career, namely the life cycle, an idyllic youth, and the beauty of the natural world.
It was during his adolescence that Denis decided to pursue a career in painting. He greatly admired Fra Angelico’s Le couronnement de la Vierge, which he saw at the Musée du Louvre, as well as more contemporary canvases by Puvis de Chavannes, several of which were exhibited at Durand-Ruel in 1887. Denis found the ‘decorative, calm and simple appearance of [the latter’s] paintings very beautiful’ and went on to compliment the backgrounds (quoted in ibid., p. 21). Like Chavannes, Denis, too, set his figures in ornamental grounds and often arranged them hierarchically in worlds that feel at once secular and sacred, imaginary yet tangible.
In pursuit of his artistic education, Denis enrolled at the prestigious Académie Julian, in 1888, alongside his future Nabis cohort, Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard; they would move to studios at 28 rue Pigalle by the end of the decade. Decorative simplification was to become key to their bourgeoning art practices, which probed the symbolic and spiritual possibilities of art. A sense of rhythmic patterning is central to Avril in which the verticality of the trees is offset by the twisting forest path. Dots of pigment adorn the bark and grasses, a nod to Georges Seurat, whose work Denis greatly esteemed. In Denis’ idyll, garlands wrap their leafy vines and white, astral anemones cover the ground like constellations spread across the night sky. This is a world that appears untouched by time or the forces of modernisation that were upending France’s landscapes during this period. Instead, Denis has conjured an arcadia in paint.
Avril was initially owned by Arsène Alexandre, the art critic, who acquired the painting directly from the artist. Alexandre was one of the first to use the term Neo-impressionism and was close to many celebrated artists and writers of his age. The painting was later in the collection of Alfred Stoclet, the Belgian engineer and patron of the arts. It was displayed in Stoclet’s home in Brussels, which was designed by Josef Hofmann, a founder of both Vienna Secession and Wiener Werkstätte. The building’s interior was decorated with large mosaic friezes by Gustave Klimt. Avril hung in a small sitting room, close to a painting by Theo van Rysselberghe and not far from Klimt’s glimmering murals.

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