Georges ROUAULT (1871-1958) Lot n° 56

Pierrot sitting Oil on paper mounted on canvas. Signed lower right. 56 x 30 cm (Horizontal trace in the paper on the whole length at mid-height) Provenance: - Yoshi Gallery, 8 avenue de Matignon, Paris. - Private collection G.D., acquired on 10 September 2004 from the previous owner. Exhibition: - Shizuoka Art Gallery, Japan, "The Georges Rouault Exhibition", 21/05/1997 to 29/06/1997, n°20 - Galerie Schmit, 396 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, Paris, 14/04 to 04/07/2008. Bibliography: Bernard Dorival and Isabelle Rouault, "Rouault. L'œuvre peint ", Volume II, Éditions André Sauret, 1988, reproduced in black and white under n°2062, page 182. Circus actors, acrobats, clowns and Pierrots are privileged themes in Rouault's paintings. Georges Salles, in the preface to the catalogue of the National Museum of Modern Art exhibition in Paris in 1952, writes about a masterpiece by the painter, "Songe creux, 1946", showing a Pierrot's face: "The face of Pierrot, in whose guise Rouault has sometimes taken pleasure in personifying himself, shows the various aspects that his solitary being takes on, according to the day. In our painting, Pierrot is sitting on a modest stool. His white, luminous costume dresses this "being of solitude": the voluminous cloth supported by two thin, fragile legs, a motionless body and a face of mask-like inexpressiveness. The iconic image, treated in a compact and sumptuous material deposited in multiple layers. The colour, set within black lines in the manner of cathedral windows, a technique that the young Rouault had studied in his early days. To this exceptional work we add a fragment from Jean Leymarie's preface to the 1971 retrospective catalogue: "his creation lets the supernatural splendour of light shine through the earthly thickness of the material".