Kerr-Xavier ROUSSEL (1867-1944)Fontaine de Jouvence... Lot 13

Kerr-Xavier ROUSSEL (1867-1944)Fontaine de Jouvence - Melancholy, circa 1900-05Oil on double-sided cardboard. Signed on one side. 34 x 48.5 cm Œuvre en rapport : Une composition approchante est reproduite in Lucie Cousturier, K. X. Roussel, Paris, Bernheim - Jeune Éditeurs d'Art, 1927, p. 60 : Ker-Xavier Roussel, La Fontaine de Jouvence, c. 1900-1905, Oil on board, 42 x 62 cm, signed lower left, location unknown, former collection of "la peau de l'ours". We thank Mr Mathias Chivot for the information contained in this notice. A certificate from the Roussel committee will be given to the buyer. Roussel developed the theme of the Fountain of Youth at the turn of the 20th century. A theme that is close to his heart, as he will develop it until the end of his life, according to different formulas depending on the period. This composition belongs to the years 1900-1905, with the personification of the fountain as a naked young woman in front of a shrub and the resurgence in a puddle, animated by putti and nymphs. We know of a painting by Roussel that features the old man on the left, typical of fountain compositions around 1900 (Ker-Xavier Roussel, Étude pour une Fontaine de Jouvence, c. 1900-1905, Oil on canvas, 94 x 73.5 cm , private collection ). The other side of the work confirms the date 1900-1905. The subject is also well known, since it is this "mythology of proximity" that Roussel likes to describe, when he installs timeless nymphs in the landscape of his everyday surroundings, in a curious telescoping of two times, mythical time and everyday time. Here, in this case, a naked young woman and a child pose on the slopes of L'Étang-la-Ville, the countryside where the artist had just moved at the end of 1899.