Maquette pour un portrait de Denis

Maquette pour un portrait de Denis of 1930 is a preparatory work for a portrait of Maurice Denis — Vuillard's Nabi colleague, the movement's foremost theorist, and a lifelong friend whose aesthetic thought had been foundational to both their careers. Denis had articulated the Nabi doctrine in his 1890 essay and had gone on to become the most systematic theorist among the former Nabis, writing extensively about the synthesis of religious content with formal innovation. By 1930 both painters were in their sixties, their shared Nabi past belonging to a different artistic era, but the friendship endured. The maquette — a preparatory sketch or study — shows Vuillard working out the portrait's formal approach before committing to the finished work, the preparation capturing something of the directness of his first encounter with a familiar subject. Denis's angular face and his specific social presence within the domestic environment are the formal problem this maquette was designed to solve.

As a maquette, this work shows Vuillard's unguarded working process — color notes taken rapidly, composition tested without the polish of a finished painting. The handling is looser and more exploratory than his finished portraits, with visible adjustments and the directness of first observation rather than considered revision.