Lot Essay
Between 1902 and 1909 Rouault executed a fine series of gouaches and watercolours of prostitutes and nude girls. Invited to sit for him from rue Rochechouart, the street below his studio, Rouault was following in a tradition of painting street women which was begun by Constantin Guys, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec.
His freer watercolours of this date are often more successful than his oils. Discussing this point, Sarah Whitfield writes: "Canvas was replaced by paper, oils by watercolour, gouache, coloured inks, pastel, crayon - media of all sorts which he used either neat or with oil or petrol, sometimes mixing them together or applying one on top of another. The lightness and fluidity of these materials transformed Rouault's technique by giving him the liberty to invent and improvise on the paper. He describes the surge of creative activity that followed his illness with the excitement of someone describing a new and wholly unexpected beginning. Whether or not the moment of realisation was as sudden or as decisive as his words suggest hardly matters. In fact, the new style, as startling as it must have appeared in those works of 1902, needed time to develop. Rouault did not really hit his stride until 1904, but once he had, the euphoria of newness that carried the painting forward continued to do so over a remarkably long period. Remarkable, that is to say, in the context of Fauvism (which is the context of early Rouault), a style of painting which was equally euphoric but at the same time so fatally volatile that it burnt itself out within a few years". (Exhibition catalogue, Georges Rouault: The Early Years 1903-1920, London, 1993, p. 12)
To be included in the third volume of the Georges Rouault catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Isabelle Rouault
His freer watercolours of this date are often more successful than his oils. Discussing this point, Sarah Whitfield writes: "Canvas was replaced by paper, oils by watercolour, gouache, coloured inks, pastel, crayon - media of all sorts which he used either neat or with oil or petrol, sometimes mixing them together or applying one on top of another. The lightness and fluidity of these materials transformed Rouault's technique by giving him the liberty to invent and improvise on the paper. He describes the surge of creative activity that followed his illness with the excitement of someone describing a new and wholly unexpected beginning. Whether or not the moment of realisation was as sudden or as decisive as his words suggest hardly matters. In fact, the new style, as startling as it must have appeared in those works of 1902, needed time to develop. Rouault did not really hit his stride until 1904, but once he had, the euphoria of newness that carried the painting forward continued to do so over a remarkably long period. Remarkable, that is to say, in the context of Fauvism (which is the context of early Rouault), a style of painting which was equally euphoric but at the same time so fatally volatile that it burnt itself out within a few years". (Exhibition catalogue, Georges Rouault: The Early Years 1903-1920, London, 1993, p. 12)
To be included in the third volume of the Georges Rouault catalogue raisonné currently being prepared by Isabelle Rouault