“I also dream of Brittany. If it were not for the accursed river Cousnon which puts the Mont in Brittany, I should be Breton, too. I’m just a Granvillois, still it’s on the same bay at Saint-Michel and Saint-Malo.” - Maurice Denis, from his journal, at age 15.
In fact, if it hadn’t been for the need to flee the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Maurice Denis (1870-1943) would have been born at the family's suburban home in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, far inland from Granville on the Normandy coast. 
The devotion of the Breton people and the music of the Catholic liturgy combined to strike a chord in the earnest young Maurice, seen above in a self-portrait from 1890 when he was a student at the Academie Julian in Paris, a momentous year for the founders of the Nabi group: Denis, Roussel, Serusier, Vuillard, and Bonnard His use of repetive stylized lines connects his image with the patterned cascading branches of a tree at right, just as he unites the seated Breton woman through a curving pattern of dots that seems roll across the canvas like a wave.
How quickly Denis developed his personal style, his version of nature as stylized patterns, as artifice. His chosen colors were pale rose, emerald green and blue, heightened with ochre, and yellow. 
“The Nabi is alone in the deserted forest. He orders the leaves to reflect the rhythm of his feelings, just as a magnet orders iron filings to obey its will” Denis wrote in his journal in June 1891: There really is something musical in the rhythms Denis creates with trees and their shadows.
It easy to to see as objective correlatives for the music of water in Denis' patterned waves . His human figures participate in the patterning and also stand apart from it in their humanity, possibly because of the artist's religious faith. In Regatta At Perros-Guriec the loops of white light reflecting off the water seem part of the festivity of the occasion. Whereas the choppy waves incised on an ink-blue sea attest to the sobriety of work for The Cow Girl and her dappled charge.
Those strong upright trees, in blue in The Cider Bowl, suggest pillars in a cathedral of nature, another pattern Denis repeats in his work. A curious thing is that I haven't found any images of the cathedral at Mont Saint-Michel by Denis. 
1. Orphans, 1891, private collection - France, Montreal Museum of Art.
2. Self-Portrait, 1891, private collection - France, Montreal Museum of Art.
3. Breton Woman In A Boat, c. 1891, Museum of Fine Arts, Quimper.
4. Yellow Landscape, 1891, Art Museum of the University of Kentucky, Lexington.
5. April, 1891, private collection, Museum of Modern art, Trento.
6. Procession Under The Trees, 1892, Peter Marino Collection, New York.
7. Regatta At Perrros-Guirec, c. 1892, Museum of Fine Arts, Quimper.
8. The Cow Girl, 1893, Indianapolis Museum of Art
9. The Cider Bowl, c. 1894, Musee Maurice Denis, Saint-Germanin-en-Laye.
6 comments:
Perros-Guirec, please; except that, very nice blog, Jane ! And yes, i'm Breton !
Denez
Jane,
As ever, a thought-provoking post. I was aware of some of Maurice Denis's work, but these images and your comments provoke me to have another (and deeper) look at his oeuvre. And the references to Brittany are a timely reminder that I simply must ensure that I visit the major Gauguin exhibition in London before it closes in January next.
Anonymous, it's true that I'm not the best typist. I shall correct it. Thanks.
Andy, thank you. Denis had many friends among musicians and I think it shows in his work. Not to mention that his wife, Marthe, was a fine amateur pianist.
It really was a momentous era at the Academie Julian in Paris, for the founders of the Nabi group, for the Australian Impressionists and every other artist who studied there. So important was Academie Julian that either the teachers were brilliant or the students mentored each other. I am in awe of that school.
Hels, I read a book a few years ago "Overcoming All Obstacles: Women of the Academie Julian" edited by Gabriel P. Weisberg and Jane R. Becker (Rutgers University Press). Someone who is a compulsive listmaker must have compiled a very long list of the artists who studied there.
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