Maurice DENIS (Granville, 1870 - Paris, 1943) - Lot 6

Maurice DENIS (Granville, 1870 - Paris, 1943) Study of Bernadette with a book, preparatory to the painting Galatée ou La Poursuite (1908) Green pencil on card Stamped MAUD lower left 48 x 35 cm Provenance: Heirs of the artist Maurice Denis saw in the shores of Perros-Guirrec, the resort where he bought his villa Silencio in 1908, "a half-Greek, half-Breton charm very similar to that which I later found in the Aegean Sea". That same year, he set his painting La Poursuite on a beach in Perros, based on a famous Greek myth recounted by Theocritus. It shows the shepherd Acis, son of Pan, pursuing the nereid Galatea with his ardor, under the amused eye of bathers in contemporary outfits. The idea of the punishment soon to be inflicted on Acis by the Cyclops Polyphemus, jealous of the nereid, in no way obscures this erotic race and the joie de vivre it radiates. The teenager on the left, who is torn from her reading by this spectacle, is none other than Bernadette, the artist's daughter, born in 1899. Taken from a vibrant colored pencil, our drawing is a project for this figure. It may have started out as a natural sketch of Bernadette's attitude, which the artist then reused in his composition.