Amour

Maurice Denis’ Amour is an extended love letter to the woman who became his wife and muse. The title of each of the 12 prints is taken from the diary Denis kept of the courtship, which he transfigures in these scenes of his beloved asleep, picking roses, praying, or simply gazing back at him. All the dramatic use of flat colour and strong outlines that characterised the Nabi group of which he was the leader and theorist is present in these prints, but suffused in an otherworldly light and breathing an ethereal tenderness. This is one of the three hugely original portfolios of etchings brought out in 1899 by the great dealer Ambroise Vollard, and printed by the master craftsman Auguste Clot. The other two are by Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, and all three are being published simultaneously by Pallas Athene.