Maurice DENIS (1870-1943) - Lot 65

Maurice DENIS (1870-1943) The Music Lesson, circa 1907. Oil on cardboard. Signed lower left with the monogram MD. 116 x 98 cm. Study for one of the murals executed by Maurice Denis in 1907 to decorate the vestibule of the private mansion of Jacques Rouché, future director of the Opéra de Paris. Rouché, future director of the Paris Opera. His two young daughters are shown here, on the right, singing. Listed in the catalog raisonné of the artist's work under the title: La Leçon de Musique, étude pour Terre latine, Rouché decoration, c. 1907. Certificate enclosed from Dominique Denis, son of Maurice Denis, dated February 3, 1988. Provenance : - private collection, Nice. - Maître Rouillac sale in Cheverny, June 22, 1991. Jacques Rouché (1862-1957), music critic and director of the Théâtre des Arts and, from 1914, of the Opéra de Paris, turned to innovative artists to decorate his townhouse on the Plaine Monceau in Paris. He commissioned a ceiling for his hallway from Maurice Denis, who in 1907 created a décor on the theme of Latin Earth, inspiring art and poetry. The characteristics of the space to be decorated stimulated the painter's creativity, and the cut-out shapes of Terre latine follow the architecture of a vault. The decor is composed of three large allegorical panels, Plastic Art, Poetry and Music, as well as a Landscape, designed for the top of the entrance door and extended by two vertical door frames. A two-part stained-glass window, one of which - Nude with Mirror - is in the Musée Maurice Denis, completes the decor. The whole evokes the arts of classical humanity, which are staged on earth, while their allegory sails in the heavens. The panels are set in Mediterranean landscapes, for which Maurice Denis recalls his trip to the Midi in 1906, when he visited Cézanne. The various scenes include real and imaginary characters, among them an artist, Maillol, depicted sculpting a statue. The definitive canvases, which Rouché himself had previously uncovered and kept in his last house in Saint-Germain (now the Conservatoire de Musique), were acquired by the town of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and deposited with the Musée Maurice Denis, which also holds sketches for this décor from the artist's studio collection (text taken from the Musée Maurice Denis website).