Tête de clown

During Christmas, 1923, as he was entertaining some local children at the Swiss chalet of his Japanese friend Baron Fukushima, Rouault's Santa Claus costume caught fire from a candlelit tree and the artist's hands were badly burned. He remained in Switzerland to convalesce and six years later, embarked upon a series of approximately one hundred gouaches for a film about his work which a friend from Galerie Zack, Paris, had proposed. A text for this scenario was prepared, but the artist rejected it, and the project was never realized.

Isabelle Rouault will include this gouache in the forthcoming third volume of her Rouault catalogue raisonné.