Maurice Denis: Earthly Paradise (1870-1943)

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) is perhaps the last great French painter of his generation awaiting rediscovery, after his lifelong friends Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. With them, Denis co-founded the Japanese-influenced group known as the Nabis, eventually becoming its principal theoretician. In the 1890s, he remained at the forefront of the movement, and was also closely associated with Symbolism, but his work was tremendously wide-ranging in scope and style. After 1900, his links with Matisse and Cézanne, and his calls for a new classicism―based on his love of Trecento and Quattrocento murals―made him one of the most respected voices in European art. Denis' work ran the gamut of the visual arts, from easel painting to engraving and the decorative arts; after 1918, he worked increasingly on decorative projects in both religious and non-religious contexts. Reproducing many major works for the first time, this thorough survey supplies a definitive volume on one of nineteenth-century France's finest painters.