La Meilleure part

Painted in 1920 and now in the Musée d'Orsay, 'La Meilleure part' takes its title from Christ's words in the Mary and Martha episode — 'Mary has chosen the better part' — and belongs to Denis's post-war religious painting, which deepens in intensity after the devastation of 1914-1918. Denis lost friends and colleagues in the war, and his post-war religious works reflect a sharpened spiritual focus. The 'better part' of contemplation over action carried new urgency in 1920, when the survivors of industrial warfare were reconsidering the values of a civilisation that had nearly destroyed itself. Denis's treatment, whatever its specific subject, is likely a meditation on spiritual priority: choosing the interior life, the devotional focus, the contemplative engagement with the sacred over the claims of worldly activity. The work's location in the Musée d'Orsay places it among the key documents of his mature output.

Denis's post-war style retains the decorative organisation of his mature period while often deploying a more sombre or introspective tonality. Figures are rendered with the sculptural clarity of his classicising approach, but the overall atmosphere may carry a heavier emotional weight than the lighter pastoral works of the 1900s.