226 - Portrait of Raphaël Lemeunier / Study of a Mother and Two Children, 1889

Portrait of Raphaël Lemeunier / Study of a Mother and Two Children, 1889 Pencil on paper, front and back 15 x 11 cm Front: dated “Oct. 22, 89” in the lower left corner, and a vertical stamp with the monogram “MAUD” in the lower right corner Back: a vertical stamp with the monogram “MAUD” in the lower right corner (Stains) Provenance: Maurice Denis Collection Private collection Among the figures who shaped Maurice Denis’s youth, his friendship with the musician Raphaël Lemeunier holds a particularly cherished place. Their close bond, already evident by the late 1880s, attests to the importance of intellectual and artistic affinities in the young painter’s development. Denis also immortalized this friendship in a remarkable Portrait of Raphaël Lemeunier, painted in 1889, at a time when he was still developing his personal artistic language. It was also within this close-knit circle that one of the defining moments of his life took shape: his meeting with Marthe Meurier. Lemeunier served as a go-between in bringing the two young people together. His meeting with Marthe in 1890 would soon profoundly transform Maurice Denis’s personal and artistic world. As muse, model, and companion, Marthe became one of the most constant presences in his work, long before their marriage in 1893. Thus, behind the early portraits and memories of a childhood friendship, a network of connections emerges in which Maurice Denis’s romantic life and artistic creation are closely intertwined. Raphaël Lemeunier thus emerges as one of the privileged witnesses to this decisive period, at the dawn of which the intimate world that would sustain the painter’s work for years to come began to take shape.