rebellion+repose

2012/05/29
56 notes

Maurice Denis, Landscape with Green Trees, 1893

From the Musée d’Orsay:

In The Green Trees, the landscape in Loctudy (that is also to be found in a contemporary painting, Young Girls Picking Flowers by the Sea, formerly in the collection of the symbolist poet Georges Rodenbach) is used as the setting for a dreamlike ceremony in which a young girl steps out of a procession to meet an angel from which she is separated by a short wall; this is a dramatised allegory of the Calling or of the Election in a magic forest, that of Kerduel where one must not forget the famous King Arthur would have lived. Maurice Denis, who valued this painting highly, had deposited it at the Galerie Druet on January 7, 1917 only to take it back on April 22, 1918, never to part with it again. A summary of the artist’s symbolist poetry and a perfect example of the very personal style he developed within the Nabi movement, The Green Trees has been shown in the majority of exhibitions devoted to Maurice Denis over the past thirty years.

cavetocanvas:

Maurice Denis, Landscape with Green Trees, 1893
From the Musée d’Orsay:

In The Green Trees, the landscape in Loctudy (that is also to be found in a contemporary painting, Young Girls Picking Flowers by the Sea, formerly in the collection of the symbolist poet Georges Rodenbach) is used as the setting for a dreamlike ceremony in which a young girl steps out of a procession to meet an angel from which she is separated by a short wall; this is a dramatised allegory of the Calling or of the Election in a magic forest, that of Kerduel where one must not forget the famous King Arthur would have lived. Maurice Denis, who valued this painting highly, had deposited it at the Galerie Druet on January 7, 1917 only to take it back on April 22, 1918, never to part with it again. A summary of the artist’s symbolist poetry and a perfect example of the very personal style he developed within the Nabi movement, The Green Trees has been shown in the majority of exhibitions devoted to Maurice Denis over the past thirty years.

2012/05/29
16 notes

(via aryansuperstar)

2012/05/29
86 notes

cavetocanvas:

Maurice Denis, Calvary (Road to Calvary), 1889

From the Musée d’Orsay:

Maurice Denis painted Calvary in November 1889. At the time he was reading Sagesse, a collection of poems by Verlaine. Denis’ carving illustrated the first poem. The painting is the plastic equivalent of Verlaine’s poetic style which the painter appreciated for its simplicity, naivety and the “mysterious relationships between things and people”. The composition is carried by a rising diagonal formed by the group of women and the upright of the Cross. The women have lost all individuality and melt into an extremely simplified black mass, counterbalanced by the other dark mass of Roman soldiers in the background. Even Christ, brought to his knees by the weight of the Cross and embraced by a Holy Woman, is painted as a silhouette, in flat colour with a dark outline. Denis has given the scene great decorative unity and, as in Verlaine’s poem, it becomes the expression of universal grief and compassion.