Maurice Denis

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) was born in Granville on the Normandy coast and grew up in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, outside Paris. He studied at the Académie Julian under Jules Lefebvre, passed the entrance examination for the École des Beaux-Arts, and in 1890 formed the Nabis with fellow students including Paul Sérusier and Pierre Bonnard. He died in Paris in 1943. In an essay of August 1890 he argued that a painting, before it depicts anything, is a flat surface covered with colours in a deliberate arrangement, an idea that became part of the foundation of modernism. Religion and art were his passions from boyhood, and at fifteen he resolved to become a Christian painter. He decorated the chapel of his own house at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, which he called the Priory, and worked on the church of Notre-Dame du Raincy, and in 1919 he founded the Ateliers d'Art Sacré with George Desvallières to make art for churches, particularly those damaged in the war. Here: The Annunciation Under the Arch with Lilies.