Portrait de Maurice Denis

Portrait de Maurice Denis from 1930 at the Musée d'Art Moderne shows Vuillard painting the Nabi who had been the movement's principal theorist — Denis's 1890 definition of painting as "a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order" was the most quoted aesthetic statement of the period. By 1930 Denis had moved toward religious painting and Catholicism, far from his youthful theoretical radicalism. The portrait is both a personal memorial and a historical document — two survivors of the Nabi adventure recording their shared past through the act of painting.

Denis's intellectual character is suggested through the quality of Vuillard's observation — a face of evident seriousness rendered with the same formal intelligence as Denis himself theorized. The surrounding environment receives Vuillard's characteristic attention, the portrait being as much about a specific interior moment as about the sitter's individual character.