Lot Essay
In the early 1930's, a French collector of modern art named Marie Cuttoli commissioned Rouault to paint his first group of floral still lifes, ten of which she had woven into tapestries by Aubusson craftsmen. The present painting is one of a second series of fleurs décoratives which Rouault executed in the following decade. With their rich palettes and prominent borders, the 1940's bouquets clearly pay homage to the traditional art of tapestry-making. Fleurs de convention is among the largest and most carefully balanced of this second series, its purposeful juxtaposition of vibrant yellow and deep green lending the work an energy and resonance suggestive of Rouault's landscapes from this same period.
Bernand Dorival, in his catalogue raisonné of Rouault's painting, attributes the prevalence of flowers in the artist's late work to his spiritual evolution in the post-war years, to his discovery of "the beauty of nature, and of a Nature in which a radiant sun appears almost constantly...[and of] the beauty of one of the most marvellous of nature's creations: the flower." (B. Dorival and I. Rouault, op. cit., p. 14) As Jacques Maritain concludes in the catalogue to an exhibition of Rouault's work mounted in 1953, just five years before the artist's death:
No gifts are more precious and more moving than those which a Titian, a Cézanne, a Rouault give us in their old age, when they
renew themselves and take new risks once again, in a kind of supreme and extraordinary freedom which is the result of untrammeled
spiritual experience... We have been sensitized for so long to the power of emotion of [Rouault's] plastic violence...that, at first
glance, we are surprised by the calm clarity of his latest works... Let us look attentively at these subtle and luminous paintings,
whose thick matter has the stony stolidity of great primitive art:
we feel penetrated by a deeper mystery, a transcendent poetry, an
absoluteness in liberty and pictorial science which convey to us a
kind of burning serenity." (exh. cat., Rouault, Retrospective
Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1953, p. 4)
Bernand Dorival, in his catalogue raisonné of Rouault's painting, attributes the prevalence of flowers in the artist's late work to his spiritual evolution in the post-war years, to his discovery of "the beauty of nature, and of a Nature in which a radiant sun appears almost constantly...[and of] the beauty of one of the most marvellous of nature's creations: the flower." (B. Dorival and I. Rouault, op. cit., p. 14) As Jacques Maritain concludes in the catalogue to an exhibition of Rouault's work mounted in 1953, just five years before the artist's death:
No gifts are more precious and more moving than those which a Titian, a Cézanne, a Rouault give us in their old age, when they
renew themselves and take new risks once again, in a kind of supreme and extraordinary freedom which is the result of untrammeled
spiritual experience... We have been sensitized for so long to the power of emotion of [Rouault's] plastic violence...that, at first
glance, we are surprised by the calm clarity of his latest works... Let us look attentively at these subtle and luminous paintings,
whose thick matter has the stony stolidity of great primitive art:
we feel penetrated by a deeper mystery, a transcendent poetry, an
absoluteness in liberty and pictorial science which convey to us a
kind of burning serenity." (exh. cat., Rouault, Retrospective
Exhibition, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1953, p. 4)