Maurice DENIS (1870-1943)

Study for The Monks of Beuron, ca. 1903-1904 (Jean Verkade in the centre, Father Lenz on the right and Father Adalbert on the left) Oil on canvas, monogrammed lower right. 27 x 41 cm Provenance: - Succession Maurice Denis - By descent, family of the artist Bibliography: - Catalogue of the exhibition Maler und Mönch -Willibrord Verkade und seine Künstlerfreunde, Abbaye Saint-Martin, Beuron, April 2017, reproduced on page 24 of the catalogue under no. 18 A certificate from Claire Denis no. 904.0096 will be given to the buyer. This painting is a study for the 1904 painting of the same name (97 x 147 cm) in the Musée Départemental Maurice Denis. In 1903, Denis visited with Sérusier their friend Verkade, a painter who had become a Benedictine monk in the Beuron monastery in Germany. This painting evokes the theoretical discussions between Father Lenz, leader of a school of sacred art based on mathematical proportions ("holy measures") and Fathers Verkade and Adalbert (in white). Sources: Internet http://www.musee-mauricedenis.fr/maurice-denis/ THE SCHOOL OF BEURON: "In the middle of the 19th century, a powerful attraction for the Benedictine order was manifested in a fundamental renewal. It attracted to a small number of monasteries such as Solesmes and Beuron, a Christian elite which included artists or people who were very open to artistic life. Their motivation was to escape from a decadent world, to find in monastic life a harmony concretised by music - Gregorian chant - and the pictorial search for spiritual inspiration. It was also a question of freeing oneself from individualism, of working on monumental achievements, within a tightly knit group, since those concerned wanted, above all, a personal encounter with God. All of this corresponds to the objectives that the Benedictines of Beuron had set themselves. Peter Lenz is at the root of the art movement called the Beuron School. Peter Lenz was born in Germany in 1832. He received a thorough artistic education and mastered drawing, painting, sculpture, goldsmithing and architecture. He was also very interested in music and mathematics. In Rome, he met the Nazarenes who, under the influence of Catholicism and romanticism, wanted to renew art through religion. He discovers a contemplative art which will be the vehicle of German romanticism... ... But Peter Lenz is more attracted by the arts of Egyptian, Assyrian-Babylonian and Greek antiquity. His future works, exclusively religious, borrowed the style and technique of High Antiquity. In 1868, he joined Beuron. Princess Katharina von Hohenzollern, the owner of the property, asked him to build a chapel dedicated to Saint Maur. It was to be a condensed version of all the elements that characterize the Beuron School - we should say "The Beuron Style" - because there was never a School established. In 1872, he was admitted as a clerical oblate under the name of Désiderius. His objective: to lead a monastic life and an artistic life at the same time, to suggest and even impose his personal ideas in projects carried out by an organized team. His references, in other words, his preferences, were the ancient sources, Byzantine, Romanesque, up to and including Cimabue! Lenz is, moreover, strongly influenced by the theories of John Ruskin, art critic, writer and painter nostalgic for the moral virtues of the Middle Ages .... ... Thus, seduced by Beuron's approach, which offered spiritual comfort through the double vocation of monk-painter, and proposed to renew religious painting in the light of symbolist aesthetics, the Nabis Maurice Denis, Paul Sérusier and Jan Verkade, turned to his School. Maurice Denis, in memory of his 1904 visit to his friend Verkade, painted a picture that depicts Father Gresnich and Father Willibrord Verkade facing Father Desiderius Lenz, A stained glass monk, tall, majestic, with a river beard, mad about geometry and who spent his life tracing architectural outlines... with a compass of proportion." Verkade joined the Benedictine community in 1894. He remained there until his death in 1946. Sources : internet : http://www.alsace-collections.fr/Monographie