First Communicants, 1898

In First Communicants, Maurice Denis depicts a confirmation celebration set in the parish church of Saint-Germain in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a suburb of Paris, where the artist lived and worked throughout his life. The scene is bathed in an overall atmosphere of contemplation and modesty. The girls, under the eye of a sister of the Daughters of Charity, recognisable by the typical wide hood, are like floating figures, schematically elaborated and akin to the 'figures d'âme', as the artist himself described them, or frail, immobile female figures that can be related to the typical imagery peculiar to the plays of Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949), which Denis frequently incorporated on canvas during the 1890s-1900s. The soft, harmonious colour palette, composed of shades of blue, green, yellow and pink, emphasises the communion between the communicants as they take the next step in their life of faith.