The Nabis. Albert Kostenevitch

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      This idea was current all across Europe. It was not rejected by the academic and salon leaders, but what they offered was the construction of modern works of art based on copying Renaissance and Baroque examples, which merely led to a still-born “historicism”. The creative young artists of Paris were concerned with something entirely different. They dreamt of decorative and monumental painting which would absorb all the colouristic discoveries of the previous two decades. Later Verkade recalled: “Around 1890 a war-cry surged through the studios: ‘We’ve had enough of easel-paintings, down with useless furniture! Painting must not usurp a liberty which isolates it from other arts! There are no paintings, but only decorations!’”[8] What were they to be like, these new decorations? Even beginners in painting realized that merely copying the Old Masters would be no better than the thoughtless transfer of the Impressionists’ brilliant colours onto walls. It was then that many artists’ eyes turned towards Puvis de Chavannes. The seventeen-year-old Denis wrote in his diary: “Yesterday I visited the exhibition of Puvis de Chavannes’ works. The calm, decorative aspect of his pictures is very beautiful: the colour of the walls is delightful, the harmonies of pale-yellow tones are superb. The composition is astonishingly well thought out and lofty; this suggests wonderful mastery. I am sure that above all it is the composition that influences the soul gently and mysteriously, elevating and soothing it.”[9] Not only Puvis de Chavannes’ murals in the Pantheon but also his easel paintings were seen as a lesson in decorative art. Gauguin made a copy of his Hope, and later, on Tahiti, painted two versions of A Poor Fisherman, a work (now in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris) which was also copied by Maillol, who was close to the Nabis. Even many years later Anna Golubkina, advising her friend and fellow artist L.Gubina what to see in Paris in the short time at her disposal, said: “Don’t linger in the Pantheon – just look on the right for Puvis de Chavannes’ In the Luxembourg, don’t forget Puvis de Chavannes’ Poor Fisherman”.[10] It is worth noting that the study for this picture was among the early purchases made by Sergei Shchukin. The deliberately restrained work of Puvis de Chavannes, by no means as daring in colour as the canvases of Manet, Monet or Degas, was destined to become a kind of banner for the following generation of artists. This generation dreamt of murals, of an “eternal” type of art; the young painters were fascinated by the promise which Puvis de Chavannes’ painting held; they saw that contemporary easel painting could stimulate meditation on life, breaking through the realm of purely visual facts. Maurice Denis, who loved to express himself in the language of a manifesto, formulated the aesthetic credo of his milieu in the following way: “We insist on the idea that the visible is a manifestation of the invisible, that forms and colours are indications of the state of our soul.”[11]