Ink & Waterpainting. At the end of the 1890s, not yet known enough to live by his art, he accepted a post of stationmaster in a small Algerian village. The train did not go there every day, which left him a lot of free time. Algeria, flagship of the French empire, then appeared flourishing. The good colonial conscience was intact; the metropolis did not see the problems posed by the French presence, let alone imagine that the natives could one day ask for their independence. Country of cocaine for the big planters, Algeria was also, since Delacroix, for the painters, who found there a dazzling light, a sumptuous pallet of colors, new human types. Denis-Valverane was particularly sensitive to the charm of North Africa, which he was to remember all his life. This
Algerian interlude found expression on his return to France: the publisher Cornély commissioned him many illustrations for the Golden Book of the 1900 World Fair.