Maurice Denis was a member of the Nabis—meaning "prophets" in Hebrew—a group of vanguard artists including Pierre Bonnard, Henri Ibels, Paul Ransom, Paul Sérusier, Ker-Xavier Roussel and Édouard Vuillard, who met at the Académie Julian in Paris. Denis observed that, “It was the materialism of our teachers that led us, in reaction, to seek beauty outside nature, nature through science and art in theories” (quoted in Maurice Denis (exhibition catalogue), Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon, 1994, p. 115). Denis published “Définition du Néo-traditionnisme” in 1890, when he was just nineteen years old. In it he states:
"Remember that a painting, before it is a war horse, a female nude or some little genre scene, is primarily a flat surface covered with colours arranged in a certain order"
This observation would ultimately become one of the more celebrated remarks on the burgeoning stratum of Modern art.
Portrait d'Yvonne Lerolle assise depicts the daughter of one of the artist’s most important patrons Henry Lerolle, whose financial support allowed Denis to pursue a career in art. Painted in a serene palette of deep mauves, blues and pinks, Denis uses loose brushwork to render the background and the torso of the girl in an intimate soft focus. Set against these planes of colour, it is her face, framed by the roses on either side, that is the focus of the composition. Here Denis’s brushwork shifts as he delicately handles her wide-set eyes and porcelain complexion in the glow of a blue tempered twilight. The exquisite care taken is reflective of the importance of the final composition that Denis was working on, of which this painting is a direct study - Portrait d'Yvonne Lerolle en trois aspects, now in the collects ion of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris (see fig.1).
