Drying the Linen, or Moonrise at the Priory
Maurice Denis (French, 1870–1943)
1894
- Medium
- oil on canvas glued to cardboard
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Unframed: 34.9 x 31.4 x 0.6 cm (13 3/4 x 12 3/8 x 1/4 in.)
- Culture
- France, 19th century
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
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.
