
Cover for Love
<p>This cover belongs to 12 prints titled <em>Love</em>, a series of color lithographs that form a disjointed narrative about a woman who experiences love, although it is unclear if she is falling in love with a man, nature, or her faith. Each soft and dreamlike image is paired with a caption of fragmented poetry that serves as its title, but these phrases do not directly describe their corresponding images. Maurice Denis, who was also a writer, crafted these puzzling yet evocative captions to add layers of meaning through the interplay of text and image.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1898
- Dimensions
- Image: 52.6 × 42.5 cm (20 3/4 × 16 3/4 in.); Sheet: 58.7 × 45.4 cm (23 1/8 × 17 7/8 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Maurice Denis
Artist

Printmaking
Maurice Denis (1870, 1943) was a French painter and theorist who pioneered the Symbolist movement and helped establish the Nabis, a group of Post-Impressionist artists working in the 1890s. He developed a distinctive approach to religious and decorative painting that emphasized flat color planes, rhythmic line, and spiritual content over naturalistic representation. Denis's theoretical writings, particularly his assertion that a painting is essentially a flat surface covered with colors, profoundly influenced modernist abstraction and design. His large-scale murals and easel works combined Byzantine and early Renaissance sources with contemporary formal innovation.
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More by Maurice Denis
Annunciation
1943 · Lithograph
Luna
1939 · Lithograph
La Terrasse (The Terrace) from Essai dur l'histoire de la lithographie en France. Les Peintures lithographes de Manet à Matisse. Album de lithographies originales.
1923 · Lithograph from a portfolio of 16 lithographs
Amour
1899 · color lithography on paper
The Morning Bouquet, the Tears... (Le Bouquet matinée, les larmes...) from the portfolio Love (Amour)
1899 · Lithograph
Nymph Crowned with Daisies
1899 · Lithograph in pink, yellow, and blue on off-white wove paper, laid down on cream wove paper
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Maurice Denis
- Year
- 1898
- Dimensions
- Image: 52.6 × 42.5 cm (20 3/4 × 16 3/4 in.); Sheet: 58.7 × 45.4 cm (23 1/8 × 17 7/8 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1898-084204
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified





