Georges Rouault

Perls Galleries, New York
Henry Ittleson, Jr., New York
Thence by descent

Bernard Dorival & Isabelle Rouault, Rouault, L'Oeuvre peint, Monte Carlo, 1988, no. 2413, illustrated p. 249

Work is in very good condition. Panel is sound. Some stable cracking in black pigments. Surface is very thickly built up in a sculptural manner. Under UV light: some original pigments fluoresce but no inpainting is apparent.
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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 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, Hyperion, London, 1947, p. 8).

Jewell continues, "From about 1917 onward the principal paint medium is oil.  And when Rouault elects this medium he does so not because it is 'heavier,' but simply because it lends itself to the creation of textures and effects not otherwise to be contrived.  The loaded brush dragged across a specified area can pile up rich plump sonorities, as may be observed in that memorable masterpiece, The Old King, or in The Wounded Clown."

"Often the piling up of paint is done, actually, in layers; for Rouault has long made it a practice to hold on to paintings over a considerable stretch of years, turning back to them repeatedly, brush in hand.  This procedure makes it in many cases difficult or quite impossible to date work, even work that bears a hallmark of one period rather than of another" (ibid., p. 11). 

In the present work, a plethora of layers of pigment can be seen in the thickly applied paints.  The build-up of the impasto literally creates a three-dimensional work that had to have taken many years to complete.  Deep recesses are discernible by the delineation of the clown's hat, his cheeks, and especially his collar and blouse.  Tête de clown exemplifies Rouault's characteristic and highly modern long-term re-working of his canvases.