Maurice Denis, painter and evangelist of Nature

About the "Maurice Denis - Les chemins de la Nature" exhibition, on view until 1 October at the Domaine départemental de la Roche-Jagu (22).

In Ploëzal, in the Côtes d'Armor department, the Domaine départemental de la Roche-Jagu is exhibiting 115 works by Maurice Denis (1870-1943), in a major cultural venue located just a few kilometres from the Côte de Granit Rose, where the painter often spent time. Following on from the highly successful two-part exhibition entitled "Maurice Denis and Brittany", presented at La Roche-Jagu and the Musée de Pont-Aven in 2009, the aim this time is to focus on the place of Nature in the painter's work. Loans from national and regional museums and private collections have made it possible to bring together all these works of art, 24 of which are being exhibited for the first time. It's a fantastic opportunity to take in most of the subjects that made the famous "Nabi with beautiful icons" famous, starting with the gardens of his life, spaces that were conducive to scenes of family intimacy as well as mythological or religious subjects. Both the figures in the garden and the picturesque landscapes illustrate the artist's interest in the variations in nature that allow colours to shine. Trees are also a recurring theme in his painting, and even a motif in his paintings, giving rise to this ongoing dialogue between Art and Nature, the material and the spiritual.

"Nature is a kingdom, and Maurice Denis was its evangelist, one of its greatest scrutinisers, capable of expressing its beauty and miracles, its infinite spirituality", writes Colin Lemoine at the start of the article he devotes to deciphering the painting Le Dessert au jardin, in the Arrêt sur image section of the art magazine L'Oeil. "His sketchbooks are the shrouds of a devotion that nothing will ever fail: everywhere, trees, lakes, mountains, clouds and meadows, as if the surrounding world offered a marvellous source that dispensed with the need to look elsewhere for the sacred, within easy reach of the eye and the hand. And the journalist goes on to describe Maurice Denis as a "painter-gardener who knew, like few others, how to combine the familiar and the landscape, how to dissolve the everyday into immemorial scenes, like his Dessert in the Garden".

Best known as the theorist of the Nabi movement, Maurice Denis was above all one of the most sought-after painters and decorators of his generation. No doubt he made a comfortable living from his works of art for sale. A Catholic and spiritual painter, Maurice Denis created works with strong symbolism, bewitching decorative lines and bold colours! Maurice Denis was greatly influenced by Italian Renaissance art. From his first encounters with the works of the Italian masters at the Louvre to his many trips to Italy, particularly under the guidance of André Gide, the artist was captivated by the iconology and symbolism of Christian works from the Renaissance. Aged 20 in 1890, the painter had a phrase that was to become famous: "Remember that a painting, before being a warhorse, a naked woman, or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colours in a certain assembled order". And yet...

What an enigmatic painting this Dessert au jardin, chosen by Colin Lemoine to illustrate the full range of Maurice Denis's talent, capable here of combining three genres in a single composition: still life, portrait and landscape painting! Painted in 1897, it could also be entitled Portrait de Marthe et Maurice Denis au crépuscule (Portrait of Marthe and Maurice Denis at dusk), and is one of the last Nabis paintings by the artist, who always refused to sell it as a work of art. It is now kept at the Musée départemental Maurice Denis in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which will be hosting this exhibition from 21 October 2023 to 31 March 2024.

Since crossing paths with Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard, Paul-Elie Ranson and Henri-Gabriel Ibels at the Académie Julian in 1888, Maurice Denis had formed the Nabis group with them, drawing inspiration in particular from the famous Talisman painted by Sérusier in Brittany under the guidance of Paul Gauguin, an ode to pure colour that Maurice Denis would treasure for the rest of his life like a relic. But the Christian painter would gradually move away from the strident works that heralded Fauvism, towards the suave colours and classicism of a Poussin or a Raphael, his faith leading him more naturally towards Fra Angelico, who would always remain his point of reference, and his taste towards the great decors of Puvis de Chavannes.

The foreground of Dessert au jardin is not just a table: everything about it is so symbolic that it's actually an altar! "With its bold effect of perspective, similar to the devices favoured by the Italian Primitives, the table allows the viewer to be integrated into the painting, to become an invested spectator," explains the journalist from L'Oeil. "On this prosaic altar are two glasses and two plates, one holding cherries, the other peaches. A daily Eucharist, celebrated on a modest balcony. These humble fruits of passion silently express the fruitfulness of a union, three years after the sudden death of an eldest son a few months after his birth. It would be an understatement to say that married love here is courtly love, which resonates with the splendid painting by Maurice Denis a few months earlier, stripping the same model to make not a voluptuous idol but an effigy of innocent, almost virginal beauty: The Lady in the Walled Garden (1894).

As for the rose, symbol of delicate passion, it is perfectly centred to focus attention, and more than a gift from the man to the woman, it becomes here a token of love. "Its colour vibrates with Martha's mauve complexion and the brown-green monochrome of the painter's clothing. Warmed by an invisible moon, these melancholically muted tones are characteristic of Nabi painting, eager for faded violets and light pinks, for subtle, almost musical harmony," explains Colin Lemoine. "Time seems suspended, as if in a dream. And yet we know the address of this dream - the Villa Montrouge, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, whose second-floor balcony offered a bird's-eye view of a delightful garden. The garden in which Maurice Denis placed a motif borrowed from one of his earlier paintings, L'Echelle dans le feuillage (Ladder in the foliage) (1892), irresistibly reminiscent of the ladder flanking the cross on Golgotha and the inconsolable women weeping for Christ... All this is topped by a luminescent sky reminiscent of the finest works by Lorrain and Alphonse Osbert, splendid masters of twilight...

Illustration : Maurice Denis - Nature's Paths