DENIS, MAURICE. - Painter, b. at Granville (Manche) on 25 Nov. 1870, d. at Paris on 13 Nov. 1943. He is one of the most significant representatives of modern French religious painting.
Having grown up in an environment dominated by the great personalities of the leading French Impressionists of the second half of the 19th century, such as Monet, Van Gogh, and Cézanne, after a journey to Germany (1896) and a long stay in Italy, he turned toward archaizing forms which at times recall those of the Nazarenes. Particularly noteworthy are his paintings in the apse of the church of the Holy Spirit in Paris (1933–34), that in the apse of the church of St. Paul in Geneva, those commemorating St. Joan of Arc and the dead of the Great War in the church of Cagny (Somme), and another depicting Jesus and a group of workers in the «Salle du travail» in Geneva.
In 1919, together with G. O. Desvallières, he founded the «Ateliers d'art sacré», which carried out notable activity in support of sacred art in France.