Follow Maurice Denis models

Follows models of MAURICE DENIS (Granville, 1870-Paris, 1943).
"Groupe de femmes".
Watercolor on paper.
Signed on the back.
Measurements: 15 x 15 cm; 37 x 33 cm (frame).

Scene starring anonymous and mysterious women who turn their backs to us or cover themselves by camouflaging their identity. One remains lying on the ground, wrapped in her tunic. The figures are resolved with a sinuous and continuous stroke, in the manner of the Nabis, and more specifically, in the manner of Maurice Denis, who developed his own style from disparate influences such as Japonisme, Gauguin, Pre-Raphaelitism and Art Nouveau.

Maurice Denis studied at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, where he coincided with Édouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel. Around 1885 he studied drawing in Paris, in the Balla workshop, and three years later, in 1888, he entered the workshop of Lefebvre and Doucet (at the École des Beaux-Arts), and the Académie Julian. At the latter, Denis befriended Pierre Bonnard, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, Paul Ranson and Paul Sérusier, who that same summer had created his work The Talisman in Pont-Aven, following Gauguin's teachings. Together, they decided to found the brotherhood of Nabis artists, abandoning the naturalism of their masters for a painting capable of expressing content in a direct way. As a manifesto, Denis published in 1890, in the magazine Art et Critique, his well-known "Définition du néo-traditionnisme". A year later he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and in a Nabi group exhibition at Le Barc de Boutteville, Paris. From the years 1892-1893 are his lithographs for André Gide's symbolist tale, Le Voyage d'Urien. Also, among his first decorative commissions, the Legend of Saint Hubert (1897) for the Hotel du baron Denys Cochin, Paris, stands out. In the following years Denis moved away from the radicalism of his Nabis beginnings. In 1895, 1897, 1898 and 1904 he traveled to Italy. In Provence, in 1906, he visited Cézanne, Cross, Signac, Valtat and Renoir. His thinking became more classicist with the passage of time, as seen in his influential book, Théories (1890-1910): Du symbolisme et de Gauguin vers un nouvel ordre classique, published in 1912. Between 1909 and 1919 Denis taught at the Académie Ranson, and in 1919, together with Georges-Olivier Desvallières, he founded the Ateliers d'Art Sacré, dedicated to the training of young artists in religious decoration. For years Denis continued to exhibit regularly at the Salon de la Société Nacionale and the Salon des Indépendants, and completed various commissions for stained glass and decorations, including his History of Music for the Théàtre des Champs Elysées (1912-1913) and his History of French Arts for the dome of the Petit Palais (1924-1925). Maurice Denis died in 1943, run over by a truck, during the German occupation of Paris.