225 - Preparatory sketch for the decoration of Gabriel Thomas’s dining room in Meudon

Preparatory sketch for the decoration of Gabriel Thomas’s dining room in Meudon Oil on cardboard 18 x 35.5 cm Round stamp with the monogram “MAUD” in the lower left corner Provenance: Maurice Denis Collection Private collection A certificate of inclusion in the catalog raisonné of Maurice Denis’s work may be issued to the purchaser upon request to the Maurice Denis Committee. The meeting between Maurice Denis and Gabriel Thomas took place at a decisive moment in the painter’s career, when the decorative ideal developed since the Nabis years found a medium of expression commensurate with his ambitions. An enlightened art lover and collector, Gabriel Thomas recognized early on the uniqueness of this artist, for whom a painting was never an end in itself but could become one element of a whole conceived for a specific place and a way of life within it. It was at his home in Les Capucins, in Bellevue-Meudon, that this relationship found one of its most accomplished expressions. In 1908, Maurice Denis was commissioned to design the decor for the dining room. The dialogue between the painter and his patron was decisive here: Thomas suggested that the artist draw inspiration from the very nature surrounding the house—its orchards and gardens. The decor was therefore not conceived as an imported ornament, but as the pictorial extension of a place. From this commission emerged *L’Éternel Printemps* (*Eternal Spring*), a vast series of ten panels in which Denis composes a vision that is both familiar and idealized. Women in the garden, figures gathered around music or conversation, bathers, and fountains all come together to create a world of gentleness and fulfillment. The landscape of Meudon, however, is freed from any literal description: transformed by color and decorative rhythm, it becomes a mental garden, straddling the boundary between the tangible world and a dreamlike Eden. The preparatory sketch offered in this sale captures one of the most precious moments in this creative process. Before the monumental scale of the finished design, it retains the vitality of the exploratory phase: the arrangement of forms, the movement of figures, and the establishment of a color scheme intended to find its fulfillment within the architectural space. Above all, it recalls the method of Maurice Denis, for whom every great decorative work stems from patient conceptual work. Gabriel Thomas’s commission thus goes beyond the scope of mere patronage. It marks the beginning of a lasting relationship between the collector and the painter, founded on a shared understanding of the ambitions of decorative art.