1894
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dominant colour
Drying the Linen, or Moonrise at the Priory is a 1894 unspecified by Maurice Denis, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman in black hangs white sheets on a line in a moonlit garden. The walls of a stone priory rise behind her, and trees cast long shadows. Denis painted this scene twenty years before he bought the priory and turned it into his home. The moonlight isn’t just light—it’s part of an old belief that linen bleaches best under a full moon. For more quiet, glowing nights like this, look up the subject *France, 19th century, mod euro*.
This painting depicts the enclosed backyard garden of a former priory—a religious building where monks and nuns live under the leadership of a prior—that Maurice Denis purchased in 1914. He transformed the building into a home for his large family and lived there for the last 30 years of his life. A woman dressed in black hangs linens to dry, so that—according to custom—they will be bleached by moonlight. The full moon casts a golden glow over the entire nighttime scene.
Denis began creating religious art in 1894, the year this painting was completed. A priory, as described in the title, is a religious building where monks and nuns live under the leadership of a prior.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Maurice Denis (French: ; 25 November 1870 – 13 November 1943) was a French painter, decorative artist, and writer.
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