| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 藝術史研究所 === 101 === Hommage à Cézanne painted by French artist Maurice Denis (1870-1943) in 1900 is a painting that combines a self-portrait, a group portrait and a gallery depiction. The dominant tendency amongst scholars has viewed Hommage à Cézanne as a document of Cézanne’s rising reputation rather than as a painting with its own formal tensions and interests. Cézanne’s significance for the early twentieth-century modernism has led scholars to extract this painting out of its complicated context in which it was appreciated.
In my study, I analyse Maurice Denis’ renewed strategy on group portraiture and homage painting, pointing out that he not only adopts the tradition of group portrait to pay homage to Cézanne, but also transforms its composition into an ideology of reconciliation. Denis’ personal intention for staging significant personalities reveals a deeper intention than his title “Homage to Cézanne” might announce. By positioning the figures of the Nabis, Cézanne, Redon, Gauguin, Renoir, and Vollard, Denis constitutes interpersonal relations on his painting. He wove a social connection between his companions and advisors in artistic association.
This thesis is divided into three chapters, each centering on a single topic about Denis’ strategy. Chapter one examines the development of group portraiture and homage painting during the nineteenth-century in France. By examining previous important group portraits and homage paintings, such as by Louis-Léopold Boilly, Gustave Courbet, Henri Fantin-Latour, and Félix Vallotton, I analyse the formal tradition of group portraiture and renewed strategy Denis has taken in Hommage à Cézanne.
Chapter two investigates the relations and pictorial dialogue in the Nabi group which mainly focus on Cézanne’s still life Compotier, verre et pommes. Positioned in the center of Denis’ work, Cézanne’s still life Compotier, verre et pommes actually plays an important role in the Nabi circle, since it was approprited by one after another. By making several examples in contrast with the prototype of Cézanne, including the still life of Denis, Gauguin, Sérusier, and Bernard, it is obvious to find that the Nabi circle and their artistic allegiances overlapped a similiar cast of characters for Cézanne’s still life. These connections demonstrate an interest in collective painting that was itself formed collectively, shaped and reshaped in a network of artists and writers, colleagues and friends.
Chapter three explores the relationship between artists, writers, dealers and others; they are directly involved in the group and their portraits in Hommage à Cézanne. The representative figures in Hommage à Cézanne such as Gauguin, Redon, Vollard and the Nabis group weaved a complicated relationship in their circle at the end of the nineteenth-century. Examining their relationship and attitude toward Hommage à Cézanne helps to interpret another dimension of the painting.
My research argues Hommage à Cézanne is not only a painting that pays homage to Cézanne, but it also pays homage to Redon. This painting also celebrates a moment that the Nabi members were getting together after their generation was reaching an end. It is a pictorial statement of a group of artists as well as a group portrait that memorializes the Nabi group, their guides, and the prospect of avant-garde. Denis even attempted to reconcile his devout Catholicism with the practice of this painting. By forging Symbolism into a new synthesis between sensation and imagination, the individual and the collectivity, as well as between modernity and tradition, Denis presented Hommage à Cézanne as a model reconciliation of intellectual and the Nabi collective aspects.
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