In 1920, Denis received a commission from Tigre Royal, a fur shop in Geneva, Switzerland, and produced Bacchanalia, a large, decorative painting. (The finished panel has been divided; one part is in the Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art.) This painting, while a preliminary sketch for it, is rendered in considerable detail. The Bacchanalia was a festival of Bakchos (Dionysos), the god of wine, an ancient Greco-Roman tradition that became a favored mythological subject in art from the Renaissance on. The tiger was placed in the center at the client’s request. The shop probably dealt in the other animals depicted as well.