50 Facts About Maurice Denis

Maurice Denis was a French painter, decorative artist, and writer.

Maurice Denis's theories contributed to the foundations of cubism, fauvism, and abstract art.

Maurice Denis was born 25 November 1870, in Granville, Manche, a coastal town in the Normandy region of France.

Maurice Denis's father was of modest peasant origins; after four years in the army, he went to work at the railroad station.

Maurice Denis's father was employed in the offices the administration of the Western Railroads in Paris.

Maurice Denis began keeping a journal in 1884 at the age of thirteen.

Maurice Denis frequented the Louvre, and admired especially the works of Fra Angelico, Raphael and Botticelli.

Maurice Denis passed the entrance examination for the Beaux-Arts in July 1888, and passed another examination in November to receive his baccalaureate in philosophy.

In 1889, Maurice Denis was captivated by an exposition of works of Gauguin and his friends at the Cafe Volponi, on the edge of the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889.

However, as Maurice Denis explained, he did not mean that form of the painting was more important than the subject.

The next major event in the life of Maurice Denis was his meeting with Marthe Meurier in October 1890.

Maurice Denis became an important part of his art, appearing in many pictures and in decorative works, such painted fans, often as an idealized figure representing purity and love.

Maurice Denis showed his works in both salons, as well as the La Libre Esthetique salon in Brussels, a leading European showcase for avan-garde art.

In March 1891 the critic George-Albert Dourer wrote an article for the Mercure-de-France calling Maurice Denis the leading example of "symbolism in painting".

The work of Maurice Denis attracted the attention of critics and of important patrons, most notably Arthur Huc, the owner of the prominent newspaper La Depeche de Toulouse who organized his own art salons and purchased a number of works by Maurice Denis.

Maurice Denis experimented with other art forms and with decorative art.

Maurice Denis appeared in his landscapes, and in his most ambitious works of the time, The series called The Muses, which he began in 1893, and showed at the Salon of Independents in 1893.

Maurice Denis sold the first painting to his friend Arthur Fontaine; In 1899 The French state acquired one of the paintings, his first official recognition.

Maurice Denis's wife played the piano, and throughout the 1890s Denis had a growing interest in the connections between music and art.

Maurice Denis painted a portrait of her at the piano in 1890.

Maurice Denis designed a flowing lithograph, featuring Marthe, for the cover for the sheet music of La Damoiselle elue by Claude Debussy, as well as another lithograph for the poem Pelleas et Melisande by Maurice Maeterlinck, which Debussy transformed into an opera; and in 1894 he painted La Petit Air, based on the poem Princesse Maleine by Stephane Mallarme, the most prominent literary proponent of symbolism.

Maurice Denis made another painting, this time of Marthe nude in the garden, representing both sacred and profane love in one figure.

Maurice Denis's most important decorative work was a series of painted panels for the office of Baron Cochin, together called The Legend of St Hubert, painted between 1895 and 1897.

Maurice Denis produced a small number of portraits, including an unusual portrait of Yvonne Lerolle which showed her in three different poses in the same picture.

In January 1898 Maurice Denis made his first visit to Rome, where the works of Raphael and Michelangelo in the Vatican made a strong impression upon him.

On his return to Paris, Maurice Denis re-oriented his art toward neo-classicism, with clearer lines and figures.

Maurice Denis was affected by the political turmoils of the time, such as the Dreyfus affair which divided French society and the art world with Emile Zola and Andre Gide on one side, defending Dreyfus, and Rodin, Renoir and Maurice Denis on the other.

Maurice Denis was in Rome during most of the events, and it did not affect his friendship with Gide.

Maurice Denis joined the nationalist and pro-Catholic Action Francaise in 1904, and remained a member until 1927, when the group had moved to the extreme right and was formally condemned by the Vatican.

Until about 1906 Maurice Denis was considered in the avant-garde of Paris artists, but in that year Henri Matisse presented La Joie de Vivre with the bright and clashing colors of fauvism.

Maurice Denis followed this with a series of pictures of nudes at the beach or in bucolic settings, based on mythological themes.

From 1899 to 1911 Maurice Denis was busy with graphic arts.

Maurice Denis then returned to making woodblock prints, doing a black-and-white series L'Imitation de Jesus-Christ, in collaboration with the engraver Tony Beltrand, which published in 1903, then illustrations for Sagesse by the poet Paul Verlaine, published in 1911.

Maurice Denis made highly decorative book designs and illustrations for Vita Nova by Dante and twenty-four illustrations for Eloa by Alfred de Vigny.

In 1908 Maurice Denis began work on an important decorative project for the Russian art patron Ivan Morozov, who had been a major patron of Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir, and who owned The Night Cafe by Vincent van Gogh.

Maurice Denis created a large mural panel, The history of Psyche, for the music room of Morozov's Moscow mansion, and later added some additional panels to the design.

The theatre was modern; it was the first major building in Paris constructed of reinforced concrete, and is considered the first building in the Art Deco style; but Maurice Denis' work was purely neoclassical.

Maurice Denis later gave him credit for teaching her the craft technique of painting, though her art-deco style was quite different from his.

Maurice Denis devoted much of his time to writing about theory.

Maurice Denis painted a series of works of nudes at the beach, an homage to the bathers of Raphael and the classical nudity of the Venus de Milo and other Greek sculpture.

In 1914 Maurice Denis purchased the former hospital of Saint-Germaine-en-Laye, constructed under Louis XIV in the 17th century.

Maurice Denis renamed the building "The Priory" and Between 1915 and 1928, with the aid of the architect Auguste Perret, he decorated the building, particularly the unfinished chapel, which he filled with his own designs of frescos, stained glass, statues and furniture.

The windows were made in collaboration with the stained-glass artist Marguerite Hure; Maurice Denis designed the figurative art in the center of each window, while Marguerite Hure created the window and the abstract glass designs around it.

Maurice Denis said that he was against academic art because it sacrificed emotion to convention and artifice, and was against realism because it was prose and he wanted music.

Maurice Denis painted two of the major works, the Altarpiece and another large work beside it.

Maurice Denis was commissioned to make two mural panels for the Palais de Chaillot, built for the 1937 Paris International Exposition.

Maurice Denis invited several friends from his earlier career, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and Roussel, to participate in the project with him.

Maurice Denis married again on 22 February 1922 to Elisabeth Graterolleore, whom he had used a model for one of the figures in the cupola of the Theatre des Champs-Elysees.

Maurice Denis was very active in the Roman Catholic Church as a Tertiary, or member of a lay religious order.

The published writings and the private journal of Maurice Denis give an extensive view of his philosophy of art, which he developed over his lifetime.