Maurice Denis was a French painter known for his involvement in the Nabis group. His richly colored paintings employed contrasting warm and cool colors to depict landscapes, portraits, and mythic or religious scenes, such as Easter Mystery (1891). “Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a nude, an anecdote of some sort, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order,” he once wrote. Born on November 25, 1870 in Granville, France, he went on to study at both the École des Beaux-Arts and later the Académie Julian, where he met Paul Sérusier, Édouard Vuillard, and Pierre Bonnard. During these early years in Paris, he and his classmates became interested in the...