Atelier de l’artiste, puis par descendance

Collection Antoine Poncet (1928-2022), sculpteur et petit-fils de l’artiste, et Florence Poncet, Lausanne

Vente Bâle, Artcurial Beurret Bailly Widmer, Collection Antoine et Florence Poncet, 21 juin 2023, lot 3 

Acquis lors de cette vente par l'actuel propriétaire

Collection Louis Grandchamp des Raux

Paris, Galerie Beaux-Arts, Maurice Denis, avril-mai 1963, n°40

Albi, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Maurice Denis, septembre-novembre 1963, n°65, p.31

Thonon-les-Bains, Maison des Arts et Loisirs, Maurice Denis, Genève et le Chablais, janvier-mars 1971, n° 28

Cette œuvre sera incluse au catalogue raisonné des œuvres de Maurice Denis actuellement en préparation par Mesdames Claire Denis et Fabienne Stahl, sous le numéro n°897.0202.

Une attestation d'inclusion numérique de Mesdames Claire Denis et Fabienne Stahl sera remise à l'acquéreur.

In this sketch for the Visitation Bretonne, painted in 1897, Maurice Denis brings to life his reflections on Synthetism. The Nabis’ theoretician focuses on the essentials of the narrative that he places within a tight frame, seeking to simplify forms to the extreme, rendering them in broad swaths of colour. Unlike the final work, here the colour palette is limited, the interplay of light and shadow is absent, and the details – faces, objects, landscape, cat – have not yet been fully developed. This work is heir to the lesson that Gauguin imparted to Sérusier; it is a true Nabi work that emphasises the simplification of forms, the absence of perspective, and the expressiveness of colour in the service of emotion. The painting, though composed mainly of cool colours, is particularly luminous thanks to the predominance of white and scattered touches of yellow. It is indeed ’in the limitation of means that the artist can best demonstrate his strength¹’, as Gauguin explained regarding Denis, who sought through this economy of means “greatness through precision²”.