Religious mystery

In the last decade of the nineteenth century in France covers the print hysteria: impressed colored Japanese printsthat produce a big impression on young artists who revived the art of color printing, grow, and master printmakers, technically able to produce complex prints on art sketches. Finally, there are art dealers willing to invest in the entire edition lithographic albums. They dream about their FrenchHokusai and Hiroshigethat the example of the famousviews of Edo or stations of the Tokaidowill picture simple, everyday scenes of life in Paris.
In 1899 an art dealerAmbroise Vollard taken for the publication of three lithographic albums of artists from the group "Nabi".Pierre Bonnard collects 12 papers in the album "Some scenes of Parisian life",Jean Edouard Vuillard 12 lithographs with homemade and outdoor sketches in the album "Landscapes and interiors. And the album of Maurice Denis called "Love". All three albums will be a great artistic success, technological breakthrough, but the absolute commercial failure. Printed in one hundred copies each, they will not sell even a few years later. The Parisians were captivated by the exoticism of the Japanese bridges and the views of Fuji are not ready with the same enthusiasm to buy the types of Parisian streets, especially home interiors where flashes Vuillard mother or the wife of Denis.
Maurice Denis had never ceased to write the March - from the time of their meeting in 1891 until her death in 1919. By the time of the making of the album "Love" they have been married for 6 years, they had to mourn the firstborn, and to enjoy the birth of other children, but collecting scenes for the lithographs, Danny thought back to the time when the feeling flared up when the whole world seemed renewed and glowing, and life is "precious, restrained."

All 12 lithographs by Denis portrays Martha, and - next to her. The names for each he selects from his own diary entries, which were done during Dating, engagement, birth and expansion of passion, admiration and affection. These long, touching phrases are formed in a poetic, imaginative equivalent of the mood of the album: "The knights killed in the Crusades", "Twilight is the sweetness of old painting", "Our souls in languid gestures". This connection of the literary work and the visual embodiment is the same reminiscence in the long narrative of names Japanese woodblock prints as simplified flat shapes, and decorative patterns on the dresses and furniture.

The format of the album, Danny receives a welcome opportunity to talk about different manifestations of the character of Martha. One mood he always seemed a little prior to that, he wrote"Triple portrait of Martha" and "Muse"filling the canvas of her repeating in different States and moods in a way, looking in her face in moments of sadness and thoughtfulness, joy and concentration. Reproducing within the canvas of the image of his favorite model, he reached a mysterious effect, sensations of unreality and true symbolist nesselrotte images. And in 1895, Denis, anticipating "Love", will collect a part of these stories is a large cycle "Love and life of a woman" - and show it in the gallery of art dealer Siegfried Bing. And later these same images again in a long frieze, which Denis will write on your bedroom wall and Martha - and will finish and correct until 1922, when the next Martha will be the artist's second wife Lisbeth.
Today only a few museums can boast of a complete, intact album "Love" in the graphics display.

Author: Anna Sidelnikova