Working in the embers of Symbolism, at the inception of Fauvism and prefiguring Expressionism, Georges Rouault was pivotally involved in some of the most significant art movements of the early 20th century.
His was a distinctive and idiosyncratic artistic voice but, despite his proximity to these groups, he cultivated a solitary image. Though held in high regard in his lifetime, his self-isolation perhaps explains why he remains more of a cult figure than a megastar within Modernism today.
A challenging background makes the success of his career all the more extraordinary. Born into poverty, in a cellar in Belleville, Paris, Rouault was nonetheless encouraged to nurture his artistic talent by his supportive mother and grandmother. At the age of fourteen, he apprenticed as a glass painter and restorer for five years. Historians have been tempted to attribute his use of black linear outlines and jewel-toned palette, so characteristic throughout his career, to this formative early environment.
Formal artistic study commenced after his acceptance to the École des Beaux-Arts in 1891, where he studied under the Symbolist master Gustave Moreau. Rouault purportedly became a favourite pupil of Moreau’s, evidenced by his nomination for the post of curator of the Moreau Museum after his teacher’s death in 1898. The absorption of Moreau’s influence would lead Rouault to embrace oblique narrative and an emotive use of colour within his work.
He kept company with many of the greatest names in Modernism, including Henri Matisse, a fellow student and acolyte of Moreau’s, who became the leader of the group known as the Fauves. Indeed, Rouault was one of the founders of the celebrated Salon d’Automne, which famously brought the Fauve movement to public attention in 1905. It is with the Fauves that Rouault is subsequently most closely associated, and his work exhibits the instinctive, unconstrained brushwork and pure colour that defined the group’s radical break from tradition.
In 1910, Rouault exhibited work in the Druet Gallery where it was encountered by a group of young artists from Dresden, who would later go on to develop Expressionism. Their aesthetic mirrors Rouault’s embrace of exaggerated and, at times, grotesque characterisations. Though his influence is underexplored in art-historical terms, the parallels are nonetheless striking.
As we have seen, Rouault developed a distinctive and focused artistic voice throughout his career: definite black linear outlines, vivid colour, expressive brushwork, simplified forms. He also pursued a narrow field in terms of subject and is known for his depictions of clowns and circus performers, prostitutes and religious figures, in other words, societal outliers, of which he considered himself one.
Rouault was a deeply spiritual man, indeed he had become a devout Catholic after a mental health crisis in the late 1890s, and this shades even his darkest subjects with a redemptive edge and a psychological dimension. Despite his self-mythology of “the artist as exile,” Rouault achieved (unsought-for) fame and was celebrated internationally during his lifetime. He even found success in America in the 1950s, where his work was purchased by the likes of Dan Flavin and Gregory Peck, and famously went on to influence the art of Bob Dylan, who purportedly had a Rouault poster on the wall of his 1960s Greenwich Village apartment.
A quintessential “artist’s artist,” Rouault remains a fascinating figure whose work can be found in major institutions around the world, and in many an educated and discerning collector’s home.
