Bibliography
Catherine Lepdor and Isabelle Cahn (ed.), Maurice Denis. Amour, exh. cat. Lausanne, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Paris, Editions Hazan, 2021: n. 58-70 [Laurence Schmidlin].
Catherine Lepdor, ‘Sleeping Pictures. Sur quelques représentations de La Belle au Bois Dormant au XIXe siècle,’ in Le Sommeil ou quand la raison s’absente, Les Cahiers du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne, n. 9, 1999: 34-47, n. 37.
Pierre Cailler, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre gravé et lithographié de Maurice Denis, Geneva, Editions Pierre Cailler, 1968: n. 108.
Allégorie is the opening lithography in Amour, an illustrated book commissioned by the publisher and art dealer Ambroise Vollard in 1892. When it was eventually published in 1899, it contained thirteen compositions – twelve plates and a cover – recounting episodes from the artist’s passion for Marthe Meurier. The captions are inspired by his diary and texts collected as Amours de Marthe, written during their lengthy engagement before they married in 1893.
Here, Marthe lies on a divan, rose in hand, blissfully slumbering in a cosy greenhouse full of purple blossom. Its liminal place at the start of the book and its title give it a special status. Maurice Denis’s depiction of a sleeping young woman crowned by a member of her retinue orchestrates our interpretation of the rest of the book. His reading cues are underpinned by the lightness of the lines, the evanescent forms, and the pastel palette, all creating an atmosphere of silent reverie.
Denis invites us to seek refuge in a dream, like the many adaptations of Sleeping Beauty produced around the same time by Symbolist and Decadent artists, featuring princesses who refuse to wake up, preferring to sleep on after the prince’s kiss or die rather than face reality. In 1892, Denis designed the sets for Gabriel Trarieux’s five-act fairy tale play Le Songe de la Belle au Bois (Beauty dreaming in the woods) in the same vein. He also painted two similar works, Belle au bois d’automne (Beauty in the autumn woods, private collection) and La Dormeuse (Sleeping woman, Bayonne, Musée Bonnat-Helleu).