Pierrot; 'Ma Fonction est d'etre blanc'

On 7 August 1888 Roussel, Whistler and Oscar Wilde were in the audience of a production of Theodore de Banville's Symbolist play 'Le Baiser' which was staged in Cannizaro Wood on Wimbledon Common with Lady Archibald Campbell as Pierrot. In the play, Pierrot declares his innocence but when he kisses a fairy to save her life, he finds that instead he wants to possess her. Roussel saw a parallel in the play with the sophisticated artist's struggle to retain his own innocence and he produced a series of etchings of Pierrot inspired by Lady Archibald Campbell's depiction of the rôle.
(see M. Parkin, Theodore Roussel, Exhibition Catalogue, London, 1997, no.64).