Maurice Denis

1870 – 1943

French painter, designer and writer on art theory. Early in his career, he was a Symbolist and a member of the Nabis. In his article Definition of neo-Traditionalism (1890), he made a famous pronouncement on art, which has often been regarded as the key to contemporary aesthetics of painting: 'Remember that a picture - before being a warhorse or a nude woman or an anecdote - is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.' His early work did indeed put great emphasis on flat patterning, but he was also very much concerned with the subject matter, for he was a devout Catholic and set himself to revive religious painting. Denis's career as a painter was industrious and prolific. Exhibiting regularly with the Symbolists and Neo-Impressionists throughout the 1890s, he was quick to gain a reputation and following, at first among a restricted artistic and literary lite but later in wider Roman Catholic, official and international circles. In the wake of his first important private decorative commission in 1897 for the Paris htel of Baron Denys Cochin, the Legend of St Hubert (Muse Dpartemental du Prieur, Saint-Germain-en-Laye), Denis was kept busy by a succession of decorative projects for religious and secular settings, notable among them being the enormous decorative scheme on the theme of the History of Music for the Thtre des Champs-Elyses (1912-13; in situ) and the History of the French Arts for the cupola of the Petit Palais (1924-25; in situ). In 1917 he did frescoes for the church of St Paul in Geneva, and he also designed stained glass and church furnishings. His restoration of the 17th-century priory in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which he was able to buy in 1914, involved him in the full range of decorative work implied within the original scope of the Nabi movement, studies for fresco and stained glass as well as designs for church furniture and ornaments. In 1980 the priory was established as the Muse Dpartemental du Prieur, devoted to the works of Maurice Denis and the Nabis. For the most part, his writings on art are collected in Thories (1912) and Nouvelles Thories (1922). In 1939, he published a history of religious art.

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