Maurice Denis | Springtime | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Springtime

Artist: Maurice Denis (French, Granville 1870–1943 Saint-Germain-en-Laye)

Date: ca. 1894–99

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 31 3/4 x 38 1/2 in. (80.6 x 97.8 cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: Gift of David Allen Devrishian, 1999

Accession Number: 1999.180.2a,b

On view in Gallery 829

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With Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, Denis was a founding member of the Nabis group in France, active from 1888 to 1899. Denis, the group's spiritual leader and chief theoretician, called for a new pictorial language in response to the rhythms of nature. In date and sensibility, his work bridges the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and as shown here, he had a firm grasp on modernist thought. He once said, "Remember that a picture, before being a war horse, a female nude, or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order."

Springtime, a double-sided canvas, describes a purification scene set deep in the forest of Saint-Germain, near Paris. Several pairs of young women-representing the sacred and the profane-blend into a bucolic landscape where one of them stands nude in a stream. Denis draws a parallel between the flowering sapling in the center (a symbol of spring, renewal, and Easter) and the maidens.

The composition is a study for a larger, more realistic painting of 1899 (Virginal Printemps), and in 1908 was the basis for a wall decoration. Until now, the Museum owned prints and illustrated books by Denis but no paintings, a gap filled by this gift.

Signatures, Inscriptions, and Markings

Inscription: Signed with studio monogram: M/D (in circle)
Provenance

the artist; [Ambroise Vollard, Paris]; private collection, France; [Brame & Lorenceau, Paris, until 1999]
Exhibition History

National Museum of Art, Osaka. "Art Nouveau in Painting: Europe and Japan," October 10–December 7, 1980, no. 8.

Paris. Galerie la Cave. "Maurice Denis: Huiles, dessins, pastels, sanguines: 1870–1943," March 17–May 26, 1981, no. 23.

J. P. L. Fine Arts, London. "Private View: A Selection of Impressionist and Post Impressionist Drawings, Watercolours, Pastels, and Paintings, Nineteenth and Twentieth Century French Sculpture," November 23, 1988–January 27, 1989, no. 46 (as "Virginal Printemps," ca. 1894).

Paris. Huguette Berès. "Au Temps des Nabis," May 29–July 20, 1990, no. 51 (as "Virginal Printemps," ca. 1894).

Paris. Huguette Berès. "Maurice Denis," June 5–July 13, 1992, no. 48 (as "Virginal Printemps").

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Painters in Paris: 1895 1950," March 8–December 31, 2000, extended to January 14, 2001, unnumbered cat. (p. 58).

Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art. "Picasso and the School of Paris: Paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," September 14–November 24, 2002, no. 2.

Tokyo. Bunkamura Museum of Art. "Picasso and the School of Paris: Paintings from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York," December 7, 2002–March 9, 2003, no. 2.
References

Jean Paul Bouillon. Maurice Denis. Geneva, 1993, pp. 90–91, 117.

Grace Glueck. "When One City Was the Heart of Art's Youth." New York Times (March 10, 2000), p. E39.