Yellow Evening over Fourqueux

This painting belongs to a pivotal moment in Maurice Denis’ career, when he was looking at a new kind of art. Like many of his works, it is painted on a salvaged wood panel. With its flat layers of colour and whole, almost abstract shapes, it is an example of the earliest, highly experimental Nabi manner used by the artist at the age of twenty. It was at this time that Denis articulated his famous definition: “Remember that a picture – before being a war horse or a nude woman or an anecdote – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.”