Rouault, Portrait, Divertissement (after)
1943

About the Item

Lithograph on Velin d'Arches paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Edition: 1,370. Good condition. Notes: From the folio, Divertissement, 1943. Published by Tériade, Editions de la Revue Verve, Paris; printed by Draeger Freres, Paris, 1943. GEORGES ROUAULT (1871-1958) French painter, printmaker, ceramicist, and maker of stained glass who, drawing inspiration from French medieval masters, united religious and secular traditions divorced since the Renaissance. Rouault was born in a cellar in Paris during a bombardment of the city by the forces opposed to the Commune. His father was a cabinetmaker. A grandfather took an interest in art and owned a collection of Honoré Daumier’s lithographs; Rouault said later that he “went first to school with Daumier.” In 1885 he enrolled in an evening course at the Paris École des Arts Décoratifs. From 1885 to 1890 he was apprenticed in a glazier’s workshop; his mature style as a painter was undoubtedly influenced by his work on the restoration of medieval stained-glass windows, including those of Chartres cathedral. In 1891 he entered the École des Beaux-Arts, where he soon became one of the favourite pupils of the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, in a class that also included the young Henri Matisse and Albert Marquet. After the death of Moreau in 1898, a small Paris museum was created for his pictures, and Rouault became the curator. Among the major artists of the 20th-century school of Paris, Rouault was an isolated figure in at least two respects: he practiced Expressionism, a style that has never found much favour in France, and he was chiefly a religious painter—one of the most convincing in recent centuries. Both statements, however, need qualification. Rouault was not as fiercely Expressionistic as some of his Scandinavian and German contemporaries; in some ways his work is a late flowering of 19th-century Realism and Romanticism. And he was not an official church artist; his concern with sin and redemption was deeply personal. Rouault was in the milieu of Picasso.

Creation Year:

1943

Dimensions:

Height: 17 in (43.18 cm)Width: 13 in (33.02 cm)

Medium:

Lithograph

Movement & Style:

Modern

After:

Georges Rouault (1871-1958, French)

Period:

1940-1949