The Prophets of Montmartre - The Bohemian Star

The Art of Les Nabis.

A Symbolist oil painting by Maurice Denis titled "Springtime," depicting a dreamlike, ethereal forest scene with pale, slender trees. On the left, a nude woman with long blonde hair stands at the edge of a shallow stream, leaning toward a figure dressed in a flowing, light blue robe who stands beside her. To the right, another woman in a dark blue dress sits on the green, blossom-covered ground under the trees, while other figures clad in soft white and blue garments are scattered throughout the pale woods. The color palette is composed of soft pastels, muted greens, and chalky blues. — A dreamlike Symbolist painting by Maurice Denis titled “Springtime,” showing women in long flowing robes and a nude figure participating in a ritualistic gathering in a pale, misty forest

This article originally appeared in Ashé Journal, Vol 4, Issue 1, Spring 2005.

There are places of great power. On the right bank of the Seine, Montmartre gazes down over the rest of Paris. This hill has long served as a crucible of creativity and a refuge for visionaries across eras. Tradition holds that Montmartre was once a sacred site for the Druids of ancient Gaul, who may have performed rituals atop its heights. During the Roman occupation, the hill—known then as Mons Martis or Mons Mercurii—hosted temples: one dedicated to Mars, god of war and a patron of the conquering forces, and another to Mercury, god of trade, travel, and communication. Archaeological traces, including temple foundations near the Moulin de la Galette and another close to the Sacré-Cœur and Saint-Pierre church, along with remnants like Roman columns in Saint-Pierre de Montmartre, confirm this pagan heritage.

From Pagan Temples to Christian Martyrdom

Christened with the blood of a saint, Montmartre literally means “Mountain of the Martyr.” Saint Denis (also known as Dionysius), the first Bishop of Paris, was martyred there around 250–272 CE during Roman persecutions under Emperor Valerian or Decius. According to the popular legend recounted in Jacobus de Voragine’s The Golden Legend, after being beheaded, Saint Denis miraculously picked up his head and carried it several miles (preaching a sermon on repentance all the while) before finally collapsing at the site now known as Saint-Denis, where a shrine was erected. The Abbey of Saint-Denis was founded around 630 by Dagobert I, the most powerful Merovingian king, and became the traditional burial place for French royalty thereafter.

A dramatic, realistic oil painting detail depicting the immediate aftermath of a beheading on stone steps. A headless man in dark robes is on his hands and knees, reaching down to lift his own haloed head off the ground. A bright, burst-like divine golden light radiates from his severed neck. To the right, the muscular lower legs of an executioner are visible, standing near bloodstains on the floor, while another executed body lies in the background. — A dramatic painting detail showing the miracle of Saint Denis picking up his own haloed, severed head from a stone staircase as a divine golden light erupts from his neck.

Though long dismissed as pious legend, the association of Montmartre with Denis’s martyrdom gained credence in 1611 when Abbess Marie de Beauvilliers discovered a crypt beneath the martyr’s chapel, leading to the establishment of a priory. These buildings were auctioned off and demolished during the French Revolution in 1794 to make way for plaster quarries. Earlier, in the 12th century, Louis VI (persuaded by his wife Adelaide of Savoy) founded a Benedictine convent on the site of an 11th-century monastery. In 1147, Louis built the Church of Saint-Pierre and granted large lands to the nuns. The abbey’s vineyards and fields yielded rich harvests, making it one of the wealthiest in the kingdom. These same vineyards would later fuel a bohemian renaissance, as cheap wine attracted artists and free spirits.

Vines, Windmills, and the Seeds of Bohemia

The vineyards and iconic windmills created a pastoral contrast to the gritty urban sprawl of Paris below. Poet Gérard de Nerval praised it in 1846 as “the finest panorama in the vicinity of Paris,” and Pierre-Auguste Renoir settled there in 1875. If Paris is “The City of Light,” Montmartre has often served as its beacon.

A 19th-century landscape oil painting depicting a rural, pastoral view of the hillside of Montmartre, Paris, under a large, overcast sky with bright patches of light. A winding dirt path leads up a green, grassy slope where a few small figures are walking or resting. Scattered across the hillside are traditional stone houses, orchards, and two prominent historic windmills (Moulin Radet and Moulin Blute-Fin) standing at opposite sides of the ridge. The landscape features deep earthen quarries cutting into the right side of the hill. — An 19th-century landscape oil painting showing the pastoral, rolling hills of Montmartre in 1834, featuring scattered houses, a winding path, and traditional windmills under a cloudy sky.

On the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, August 15, 1534, Ignatius of Loyola and six companions—Pierre Favre (the only ordained priest), Francis Xavier, Diego Laínez, Alfonso Salmerón, Nicolás Bobadilla, and Simão Rodrigues—walked from the Latin Quarter to the secluded crypt of the Martyrium (Chapel of the Martyrs) on Montmartre, tied to the legendary site of Saint Denis’s beheading. In this underground chapel beneath what is now near the Church of Saint-Pierre (then a quiet village church), Favre celebrated Mass. Kneeling before the altar, the group pronounced their vows of poverty and chastity one by one in clear voices, with a pledge to undertake a pilgrimage to Jerusalem (later formalized with obedience when they formed the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, approved by Pope Paul III in 1540). Scholars note that Ignatius’s exposure to humanism at the Collège Sainte-Barbe shaped the Jesuits’ educational philosophy, emphasizing rigorous inquiry, adaptability, and a synthesis of faith and reason—qualities that echoed in the humanistic currents influencing later Parisian art, literature, and theater.

During the Second Empire under Napoleon III, Haussmann’s grand rebuilding of Paris displaced many residents outward. Montmartre, still officially outside city limits and thus exempt from municipal taxes, offered cheap wine from the old abbey vineyards. This drew bohemians, artists, and radicals seeking freedom from urban constraints.

The Paris Commune

The Franco-Prussian War’s defeat in 1871 unleashed long-simmering revolutionary energies. After the armistice allowed Prussian occupation of Paris (confined to limited areas by defiant Parisians), the provisional government feared armed citizens and sent troops to seize National Guard cannons. The Guard refused, and the regular army retreated to Versailles, declaring war on the capital. On March 28, 1871, the Paris Commune was proclaimed. It abolished conscription in favor of a citizen National Guard, separated church and state (nationalizing church property), suspended debts, and ended interest on loans. The Communards encompassed anarchists, socialists, republicans, and diverse radicals united in defiance.

A sepia-toned, black-and-white historical photograph from 1871 capturing a large barricade constructed from stacked stone cobblestones across a wide Parisian street. Dozens of National Guard soldiers and citizens in 19th-century military uniforms and caps stand or sit atop and behind the wall. In the center, a figure stands high on the barricade with arms outstretched, alongside a flag bearer holding a French tricolor flag. Tall apartment buildings flank the street, with a building on the right featuring large painted advertisements, including "AUX TRAVAILLEURS" and "NOUVEAUTES." — A historic 1871 sepia photograph showing Communard National Guards standing along a stone cobblestone barricade on a Paris street during the Paris Commune.

Versailles forces attacked on April 2; by May 21, they entered the city. The suppression was brutal: during the “Bloody Week” (Semaine Sanglante), troops massacred unarmed civilians, with estimates of 10,000–35,000 killed (many in summary executions targeting working-class accents or neighborhoods like Montmartre). Hundreds of Communards fled to Montmartre’s chalk quarries and catacombs; soldiers dynamited entrances, entombing them alive.

In 1875, the foundation stone for the Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur was laid atop the butte to commemorate the Third Republic’s restoration and honor victims of the Commune (though critics saw it as a conservative rebuke). Its Romanesque-Byzantine style features a triple-arched portico crowned by bronze equestrian statues of national saints Joan of Arc and Louis IX, overlooking Paris as a symbol of republican resilience.

Many historians view the short-lived Commune as a triumph of self-organization, where Parisians—betrayed by their government’s war failures—asserted self-governance and defiant independence. This spirit of liberty propelled rapid artistic evolution in visual, musical, literary, and theatrical realms, defining the fin de siècle mood.

A high-angle black-and-white historical photograph from 1885 depicting a massive public gathering around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. The triumphal arch is heavily draped in long, dark mourning banners and flags. Positioned directly under the main arch is a monumental, multi-tiered catafalque sheltering the coffin of Victor Hugo. A dense, dark sea of thousands of citizens fills the surrounding plaza and the tree-lined avenues, looking on at the grand state funeral ceremony. — A city in mourning — Over two million people filled the streets of Paris as Victor Hugo became the first cultural hero honored with a lying-in-state ceremony under the Arc de Triomphe.

The Birth of the Fin de Siècle Spirit

In May 1885, Victor Hugo died, marking the Romantic era’s close. Revered by Republicans and Socialists, the humanist willed 50,000 francs to the poor and rejected church prayers, declaring: “I ask for a prayer from all living souls. I believe in God.” Children in Grecian costumes kept vigil over his body beneath the Arc de Triomphe; over two million lined the streets for his procession to the deconsecrated Panthéon, rededicated to great men.

Hugo’s passing ushered in Symbolism, guiding the avant-garde toward Art Nouveau, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism. Western traditions absorbed Eastern influences (e.g., Japanese prints), while artists explored textiles, glass, and lithography beyond easel painting. Montmartre fused political, mystical, and artistic currents, becoming the epicenter of decadent art and entertainment. Icons mingled at venues like Le Chat Noir and the Cabaret des Quat’z’Arts.

A sepia-toned historical photograph from 1885 looking across a massive crowd filling a public square in Paris. The left side features the grand neoclassical facade of the Panthéon, showing its massive Corinthian columns, decorated pediment with sculptures, and dark mourning drapery. Thousands of citizens wearing 19th-century suits, hats, and dresses pack the open square tightly, with some holding umbrellas. In the middle ground, large formal funeral wreaths and ceremonial structures stand amidst the sea of people. — Re-dedicating a monument — The massive crowds filling the plaza as the Panthéon was secularized once again specifically to receive the remains of the beloved national writer.

Le Chat Noir opened November 18, 1881, when painter Rodolphe Salis persuaded poet Émile Goudeau to relocate Les Hydropathes—an eclectic society of writers, artists, and performers meeting since 1878—from the Latin Quarter. The Hydropathes had published their bimonthly journal L’Hydropathe for 18 months, formalizing cafés as artistic venues. Within two months, Le Chat Noir launched its own illustrated journal, featuring Adolphe Willette, Caran d’Ache, and Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen’s wordless stories blending macabre and infantile themes. The Rabelaisian décor matched this bawdy spirit; the journal boasted: “The Chat Noir is the most extraordinary cabaret in the world. You rub shoulders with the most famous men of Paris, meeting there with foreigners from every corner of the world.” Prosperity allowed relocation to larger premises by 1885. In fall 1885, George Auriol and Henry Somm built a puppet theater; Somm’s one-act Berline de l’émigré, set in a family-run lavatory full of puns and buffoonery, evoked Gargantua and Pantagruel. This evolved into shadow theater, the cabaret’s signature attraction until its 1897 closure after Salis’s death.

The Cabaret des Quat’z’Arts, founded by François Trombert in 1893, embodied avant-garde interdisciplinarity, uniting artists, composers, musicians, performers, poets, and illustrators in direct public dialogue. Audiences participated actively, blurring creator and spectator. It continued into the 20th century, hosting 64 marionette performances of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi starting November 1901 (originally staged live in 1896 at Théâtre de l’Oeuvre with sets by Paul Sérusier and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec). Jarry preferred puppets for its grotesque king; attractions like the collage wall-journal “Le Mur” attracted to the attention of Pablo Picasso.

The Bateau-Lavoir and the Birth of Modern Art

In the early 1900s, artists congregated at Le Bateau-Lavoir (“The Laundry Boat”), a Montmartre tenement where Picasso resided 1904–1909, developing Cubism. It hosted Guillaume Apollinaire, Henri Matisse, Jean Cocteau, Gertrude Stein, and others; Picasso organized a 1908 banquet for Henri Rousseau there. Montmartre inspired Van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, Matisse, Odilon Redon, and more.

A vintage black-and-white photograph from the early 20th century showing the exterior of Le Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre, Paris. The image features a cluster of weathered, old wooden and plaster buildings on a sloping cobblestone street. On the right, a two-story building stands with shuttered windows, a stone fence, and a steep roof, while a lower, elongated shack-like structure extends along the hill to the left. In the bottom left foreground, a few figures in overcoats walk down the curved sidewalk next to bare winter trees. — The Crucible of Cubism — The modest, run-down facade of Le Bateau-Lavoir, which served as a communal hub and residence for Pablo Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, and the early 20th-century avant-garde.

Other famous names took inspiration from Montmartre and the unique spirit manifest there during the fin-de-siecle: Van Gogh, Renoir, Degas, Matisse, Redon and others. Yet a sublime, esoteric dimension emerged amid the avant-garde. Paul Gauguin’s Synthetism influenced a group known as Les Nabis (“The Prophets” or “The Inspired”).

Les Nabis: Prophets of Form and Color

A Symbolist oil painting by Paul Sérusier depicting a portrait of artist Paul Ranson dressed in elaborate Nabi ceremonial attire. The man wears wire-rimmed glasses, a pointed mustache, and a short beard. He is clad in a light blue tunic with a decorative, patterned gold collar, set against a dark red circular halo background. He holds a large, carved wooden crozier staff featuring a star emblem in one hand, while pointing his other hand down at an open book with colored lines resembling musical text or scripts. — Mysticism and Brotherhood — Paul Sérusier’s portrait of Paul Ranson captures the sacred, secret-society atmosphere cultivated by Les Nabis in fin-de-siècle Paris.

Maurice Denis famously declared: “It is well to remember that a picture—before being a battle horse, a nude woman, or some anecdote—is essentially a plain surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.” (The metaphysical implication is profound: before categorization, any object is merely a unique arrangement of elements; meaning is imposed, not inherent.)

The Talisman and the Birth of Synthetism

In October 1888, Paul Sérusier returned to Académie Julian with The Talisman (also Landscape in the Bois d’Amour), a cigar-box lid landscape painted under Gauguin’s guidance at Pont-Aven. Gauguin urged exaggeration: pure flat colors, symbolic decorative logic over imitation. This embodied Synthetism—emotional interpretation prioritizing color, line, and form; memory over direct observation; flat shapes; symbolism for abstract ideas. Art became the artist’s visionary projection, infusing mysticism via personal will.

A highly abstract, proto-Symbolist landscape oil painting featuring flat patches of intense color and visible, heavy brushstrokes. The composition depicts a heavily stylized view of a river and woods, dominated by a large field of bright golden-yellow. Silhouettes of slender blue-violet tree trunks stand along an orange-red bank, reflecting into the water below. A simple purple house shape is visible in the upper right background, nestled against green and yellow foliage. — The birth of Synthetism — The Talisman, painted on a cigar-box lid, served as the foundational icon and radical color manifesto for the Les Nabis brotherhood.

Sérusier shared it with friends, sparking debate. With Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Henri-Gabriel Ibels, and Paul Ranson (eventually a dozen, associating with Cézanne and Redon), they formed Les Nabis. Poet Henri Cazalis (dubbed l’Hindou du Parnasse contemporain for his Oriental mysticism, Kabbalah interest, and Eastern philosophy) named them; he was a Mallarmé confidant influencing their Symbolist leanings.^1

Mystical influences varied: speculation surrounds occultism, spiritualism, and Theosophy’s role. Beliefs ranged from Theosophy (Ranson and Sérusier) to orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, and anarchism. Mystics like Ranson and Sérusier contrasted with Vuillard and Bonnard, who avoided theoretical mysticism, focusing on cabaret sets and illustrations for Revue Blanche.

Unity lay in art’s role: providing continuity and unity. Their credo: “simplification of form and exaltation of color.” They stylized everyday objects (wallpapers, fabrics, tapestries, stained glass, furniture, screens, stage sets), integrating art into life. Influenced by Japanese prints and modern techniques, they sought beauty beyond nature, transforming the ordinary without corrupting its mystery.

A large-scale Post-Impressionist oil painting depicting a group of ten artists and critics gathered in an art gallery around an easel. The central focus is a still-life painting of a fruit bowl by Paul Cézanne resting on the wooden easel. The men are mostly dressed in dark, formal 19th-century frock coats and suits, with some wearing top hats, bowler hats, or glasses. Odilon Redon stands prominently on the far left, while other members of the Les Nabis brotherhood look on intently or engage in discussion. The backdrop features other framed paintings hanging tightly on the gallery walls. — A gathering of prophets — In Homage to Cézanne, Maurice Denis documents the artistic brotherhood of Les Nabis and their shared reverence for the master of Aix-en-Provence.

Mysticism, Philosophy, and Artistic Brotherhood

Organized around monthly dinners (1888–1896) at L’Os à Moëlle café then Ranson’s apartment, members wore Oriental costumes or white tunics, presented recent “icones,” discussed work, theater, literature (Mallarmé, Maeterlinck, Baudelaire). The presiding Nabi raised a crozier-like staff: “Sounds, colors, and words have a miraculously expressive power beyond all representation and even beyond the literal meaning of the words.”

Ranson and wife Marie-France (“the light of the temple”) hosted Saturday gatherings at “Le Temple” (Boulevard du Montparnasse), an “ergasterion” (Greek: workplace) alongside Georges Lacombe’s Versailles studio. Correspondence ended: D.T.P.M.V.E.M.P. (“Dans ta paume mon verbe et ma pensée”—In your palm my word and my thought). Ranson assigned soubriquets: Sérusier “Le Nabi à la barbe rutilante,” Bonnard “Le Nabi Japonard,” Denis “Le Nabi aux belles icones,” Lacombe “Le Nabi Sculpteur.”

A Symbolist oil painting by Maurice Denis titled "Eurydice," depicting a lush, sunlit Mediterranean coastal landscape framed by tall pine trees. The composition is populated by several classical, nymph-like figures in various states of dress and activity on a rocky, grassy slope. On the bottom left, a figure reclines near a kneeling woman in a pale green dress, while on the bottom right, a nude woman turns toward another figure wrapped in a long, draped green gown. In the background, the vibrant blue sea meets a distant horizon dotted with a couple of small white sailboats beneath a bright sky. — Reimagining the Arcadian ideal — Maurice Denis’s Eurydice blends classical Greco-Roman myth with the vibrant, flat color harmonies characteristic of Post-Impressionism.

Their shared style initially subdued individuality while preserving vision. By 1894, Sérusier lamented to Jan Verkade that Vuillard, Roussel, and Bonnard’s personalities eroded the collective aesthetic. Vuillard, Roussel, and Bonnard later diverged; Ranson, Sérusier, and Lacombe persisted, influencing Académie Ranson (opened 1908). After Ranson’s 1909 death, Marie-France, Denis, and Sérusier sustained it; Sérusier explored the golden ratio.

Les Nabis exemplify Montmartre’s creative evolution: embracing mystical, mythological, and aesthetic schools.

This is the story of a place and time where genius met genius, forging inspiration for those embracing human endeavor. It marks where one age dies and another is born.

Where One Age Ends and Another Begins

As Hillel Schwartz observes in Century’s End:

The new phrase, insisted Berlin journalist and philologist Fritz Mauthner in his 1890/91 essay on fin de siècle as adjective and presumptive noun, had begun as a rather empty reference to some vague anticipations of the century’s end, but the very act of giving a name to those anticipations had made possible a way of thinking about one’s time that had been unavailable before. Originally an allusion to indeterminate feelings, fin de siècle had become an active agent for historical thought. Mauthner was developing a philosophy of language, of which Ludwig Wittgenstein would soon be the peerless exponent, that knowledge and perception are tightly interlaced with language, and that their horizons expand only and conjointly with new acts of naming. Himself beset with inescapable feelings of culmination and threshold, Mauthner was impressed that fin de siècle had arrived a decade in advance of the next century. He was eager to ‘outfit for the twentieth century’ by rethinking the common past, which meant reconsidering the language in which that past had been cast. (Schwartz, 165–166)

Les Nabis were prophets of this symbolic and aesthetic rethinking. Amid an age of “the best of times and the worst of times,” they summoned light from encroaching darkness, birthing a century of world war and global connectivity. Their legacy endures through artists who, from this Parisian hillside perch, cast illumination into the world.

Don’t let the conversation stop here. Join us at Blue Sky – @thebohemianstar.com. If you’re still lingering in the old spaces, you can also join our private inner circle over at The Bohemian Star Salon on Facebook to share thoughts on music, culture and the weird side of history.

References

Buisson, Sylvie, and Christian Parisot. 1996. Paris Montmartre. Paris: Pierre Terrail.

Schwartz, Hillel. 1990. Century’s End: A Cultural History of the Fin de Siècle from the 990s through the 1990s. New York: Doubleday.

Silverman, Debora L. 1989. Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Whitfield, Sarah, and John Elderfield. 1998. Bonnard. New York: Harry N. Abrams.

(Note: Original web citations from 2004 are outdated; for Nabis, consult stable sources like TheArtStory.org or Musée d’Orsay entries.)

^1 Cazalis’s nickname reflected his Orientalist leanings amid Parnassian poets, emphasizing form over emotion.

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