The beautiful icons of Maurice Denis 1

Maurice Denis (1870–1943) was another of the founding members of the Nabis, and the youngest. To put his career into context, he was still an infant of three when the Impressionists held their first exhibition in Paris, and a member of the next and post-Impressionist generation.

A Norman by birth, he had hunble origins in the town of Granville, near the famous inshore island of Mont-Saint-Michel, on the north coast of France, but his family soon moved to Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the Paris suburbs. At the age of fifteen he decided that he wanted to combine his two interests and become a Christian painter. His major early influence came from the paintings of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes.

Denis started on the road to realise his hopes when he gained entry to the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, presumably on a scholarship, and there he became friends with Édouard Vuillard and Ker-Xavier Roussel…