In the Garden

By 1921, when Maurice Denis painted this small garden scene on a wooden panel, he was in his 50s and a long way from the flat, bright pictures of his 20s. The First World War had just ended, and much of his energy now went into religious painting for churches. The intimate garden, though, was a thread that ran through his whole life. Denis and the other Nabis, the brotherhood of young French painters he had led, always liked the quiet domestic corner, a family in a sunlit patch of green seen close up. This is oil on a panel rather than canvas, a small private surface for a small private subject, the kind of picture kept near at hand rather than sent to a grand exhibition.