Jeu de volant

Maurice Denis's 'Jeu de volant' (Shuttlecock Game, 1900) is a domestic leisure subject — the shuttlecock game played in a garden by young women or children creating one of the most characteristic subjects of his intimate domestic series. His engagement with the leisure activities of the educated Catholic bourgeoisie he depicted throughout his career gave his work a quality of sunlit domestic happiness that reflected both his personal contentment and his aesthetic commitment to joy and beauty as legitimate subjects for serious art.

Denis renders the shuttlecock game with his characteristic Nabi decorative approach — the figures in movement within the garden setting simplified and organized for decorative effect rather than photographic accuracy. His handling of the garden's light and the figures' movement creates the specific atmosphere of the leisure subject's combination of physical action and domestic ease. His palette is typically warm and harmonious, the outdoor leisure scene given the sunny quality that was characteristic of his domestic subjects.