13: The Denis Room

This hall is used to display canvases that Maurice Denis (1870–1943) painted in the 1890s. His work of that period is marked by the sincerity of a special gentle lyricism that is Denis's alone and by a calm gracefulness of manner. The 1896 composition Martha and Mary is evidence of the artist's undiminishing interest in religious subjects and symbolism and of the influence that the art of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance had on his work. The 1897 painting Spring Landscape with Figures (The Sacred Grove) incorporates the whole programme of Symbolist art. The genre preferred by Edouard Vuillard (1868–1940) was the interior. In such works he skilfully combined the decorative qualities of colour with a special intimacy of mood. Contemporaries already detected the similarity between Vuillard's tender colours and the music of Debussy.

The display is installed in one of the rooms that belonged to the Department of Foreign Trade within the Ministry of Finance between 1830 and 1917. The interior decoration of the room has not survived.