The Orange Christ (1889): Art, History and Details

The Orange Christ (1889) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Maurice Denis (French, 1870–1943).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A devout Catholic, Maurice Denis sought to create what he described as “imperishable icons.” In this small painting, he used flat planes of intense colors to conjure emotion in the viewer. Here, a somber group of women, depicted as amorphous black forms, gather around an orange figure of Christ on the cross. The sky is a reddish-purple streaked with green clouds. Pink angels flank the crucified Christ whose head is haloed in brilliant yellow. In this painting, the daring young artist combined religious fervor with unprecedented visual experimentation.

Object facts

• Title: The Orange Christ
• Date: 1889
• Creator attribution: Maurice Denis (French, 1870–1943)
• Culture: France
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on board
• Dimensions: Unframed: 23.8 x 18.9 cm (9 3/8 x 7 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 2020.107

A detail from the museum

As reflected in the two-dimensionality and color blocking in this painting, Denis believed a painting was "a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order."

Collection credit

Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift

Further reading listed by the museum

• Musée Toulouse-Lautrec. Exposition Maurice Denis; peintures, aquarelles, dessins, lithographies, du 28 juin au 29 septembre 1963, Musée Toulouse-Lautrec. Albi.1963.
• Angers. Maurice Denis & les Nabis: exposition Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers, du 1er juin au 31 août 1967. Angers, France: Le Musée, 1967.
• Distel, Anne. Maurice Denis. Orangerie des Tuileries, 3 juin-31 août 1970. Paris, France: Ministère d'État, Affaires culturelles, 1970.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.