Portrait of Yvonne Lerolle in three views

Denis's triple portrait of Yvonne Lerolle, painted in 1897 and now in the Musée d'Orsay, is one of the most distinctive portrait inventions of the 1890s Parisian avant-garde. Rather than depicting Yvonne once in a single composed pose, Denis shows her three times within the same picture surface — a device that refuses the convention of the unified portrait subject and suggests instead the temporal flow of existence, or simply the richness of a personality that cannot be captured in a single view. Yvonne Lerolle was the daughter of the painter Henri Lerolle and moved in circles that connected symbolist painters, musicians, and writers. Denis's triple-image format connects him to experiments in time and identity that were simultaneous concerns in literature (Mallarmé), music (Debussy), and philosophy (Bergson). The work is also an intimate domestic image, showing Yvonne within an interior whose decorative elements are treated with the same attention as her figure.

The triple image requires Denis to manage three distinct figure zones within a single decorative field. Each version of Yvonne is placed in a different spatial or lighting context, yet the overall composition maintains a unified surface pattern. Denis's flat space technique is essential here: if depth were illusionistically rendered, the triple figure would be incoherent.