Estimated Price:

   $   

Realized Price:

   $   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Login or subscribe to view price data

1871-1958
PARADE

PARADE

measurements
25 1/8 by 19 1/2 in.

alternate measurements
63.9 by 49.6 cm

Painted circa 1931-39.

Stamped Atelier de Georges Rouault (verso)

Oil and gouache on paper

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Isabelle Rouault.

PROVENANCE

Estate of the artist
Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Sale: Calmels, Chambre, Cohen, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, December 15, 2000, lot 58
Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

EXHIBITED

Sapporo, Hokkaido Museum of Art; Nagasaki, Huis Ten Bosch Museum of Art; Kyoto, Municipal Museum of Art, and Tokyo, Mitsukoshi Museum of Art, Swiss Private Collections, 1996

NOTE

Edward Alden Jewell states the following about the early years of Rouault's artistic production, "Though not 'officially' a Fauve, Rouault showed with the group and became popularly identified with it. Like that of the Fauves, Rouault's style was in those days an art of violent expressionism. And like theirs it represented a revolt against the stuffy academic standards of the day. But Rouault also walked apart. For one thing, he differed from the Fauves in that his art of that period was not decorative. Instead, it was passionately dedicated, as the art of the Fauves in the main was not, to pregnant social issues" (E.A. Jewell, Rouault, London, 1947, p. 8).

Rouault's interest in the world of the circus found its greatest outlet in his art during the 1930s, at the time that Ambroise Vollard had commissioned him to make etchings and woodcuts for the book Cirque de l'étoile filante, published in 1938. These depictions were based on his own childhood memories of the circus, as he remembered, "Acrobats and horsewomen, sparkling or passive clowns, tightrope walkers and freaks, and my friends, color and harmony, since my earliest childhood I have been in love with you." (quoted in B. Dorival and I. Rouault, Rouault, l'~uvre peint, Monte Carlo, 1988, vol. 1, p. 153)

As so often in his work, Rouault frames the present picture with his own painted border within the composition. He employs his typically rich palette and cloisonniste style, outlining the figures in black, like a stained glass window, thereby imparting a spiritual quality to the work. He first depicted clowns and the circus in the early 1910s, and the subject remained one of importance throughout his career.