Portrait of the artist at the age of 18 years

Maurice Denis's 1889 self-portrait at eighteen captures the artist at the exact moment he was formulating the theoretical principles that would make him one of Post-Impressionism's most important critics and theorists. It was in 1889 that Denis wrote the famous statement — 'Remember that a painting, before it is a warhorse, a nude woman, or some story, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order' — which became a founding text of modern art theory. Held in the museum dedicated to his memory at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, this early self-portrait documents the beginning of an extraordinary theoretical and artistic career.

Denis's early self-portrait shows the influence of Gauguin's Synthetism — simplified forms, flat areas of color, deliberate rejection of academic illusionism. The face is rendered with youthful directness, the chromatic choices already reflecting an interest in color's expressive rather than merely descriptive function.