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The Unknown Rouault
| Article
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20447 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1992 |
1,579 Words |
| Author
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Michael Gibson
Michael Gibson, author of a number of books on art, is the
Paris art critic for the International Herald Tribune and a
frequent contributor to publications in Europe and the United
States. |
On the 27th of May 1871, an army under the orders of the French government in Versailles was lobbing shells at Paris, which was still in hands of Commune, while the victorious Prussians--who had invaded the country and surrounded Paris--observed from a distance. When the suburb of Belleville came under fire, Marie-Louise Rouault, a seamstress, and her husband, a cabinetmaker working for the Pleyel piano firm, took shelter in the cellar of their house, 51 Rue de la Villette. There, as explosions rocked the neighborhood, she gave birth to their son, Georges.
Georges Rouault (1871-1958), the subject of an exhibition now at the Pompidou Center in Paris, always declared that the circumstances of his birth affected the way he represented the world in later years. "I was born in a cellar in the old faubourg during a period of civil and foreign war," he wrote, adding ironically: "I imagine that this is why the friends of Light later called me a 'Painter of Darkness and Death.'"
But the social context--the lively spirit and grim poverty of the faubourg--also left its mark on this frail, intelligent child whose sensitive and solemn face has been preserved in an early photograph. As he would observe: "Destitution often cut deep wrinkles in the face of even the loveliest girlv . . ., but the daily struggle did not prevent the cobbler from singing."
His grandfather, Alexandre Champdavoine, a retired postal-train employee, rather unexpectedly collected prints by Manet, Courbet, Daumier, and Forain and favored the boy's interest in the arts. By the age of fourteen, Georges was apprenticed to an artist in stained glass. The early practice of joining lead and glass may have influenced his later style--as may have the fashion of "cloisonnisme" initiated in the 1880s by Gauguin's young friend Emile Bernard, who chose to separate the various areas of color within a painting by means of a thick black line.
At the age of nineteen Rouault was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; Henri Matisse remembered him as "a pale, thin youth with red, flame-like hair." His first teacher was the highly conventional Jules-Elie Delaunay--a painter of the article visions such as The Plague in Rome now, at the Musee d'Orsay. Rouault may have been slight and pale, but he was also fiercely determined. He himself recalled how, after Delaunay had given only a cursory glance and tepid approval to drawings Rouault had shown him in hopes of being admitted to his class, the young man galloped after him and, forgetting his good manners, roared into his ear, "I want to
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