Landscape with Green Trees or Beech Trees in Kerduel
In The Green Trees, the landscape in Loctudy (that is also to be found in a contemporary painting, Young Girls Picking Flowers by the Sea, formerly in the collection of the symbolist poet Georges Rodenbach) is used as the setting for a dreamlike ceremony in which a young girl steps out of a procession to meet an angel from which she is separated by a short wall; this is a dramatised allegory of the Calling or of the Election in a magic forest, that of Kerduel where one must not forget the famous King Arthur would have lived. Maurice Denis, who valued this painting highly, had deposited it at the Galerie Druet on January 7, 1917 only to take it back on April 22, 1918, never to part with it again.
A summary of the artist's symbolist poetry and a perfect example of the very personal style he developed within the Nabi movement, The Green Trees has been shown in the majority of exhibitions devoted to Maurice Denis over the past thirty years.
