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Ker-Xavier Roussel (10 December 1867 – 6 June 1944) was a French painter associated with
File:'Rural Festival, Summer' by Ker-Xavier Roussel, 1911-13.JPG, Rural Festival, Summer
File:Ker-Xavier Roussel - Les Saisons de la vie.jpg, The Seasons of Life
File:Femmes dans un paysage d'Île-de-France Roussel PMD 980.47.1.jpg, Women in a Landscape,
''Pierre Bonnard, the Graphic Art''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Roussel (see index) {{DEFAULTSORT:Roussel 1867 births 1944 deaths 19th-century French painters French male painters 20th-century French painters 20th-century French male artists Les Nabis Post-impressionist painters École des Beaux-Arts alumni Lycée Condorcet alumni Académie Julian alumni 19th-century French male artists
Ker-Xavier Roussel (10 December 1867 – 6 June 1944) was a French painter associated with Les Nabis
Les Nabis (French: les nabis, ) were a group of young French artists active in Paris from 1888 until 1900, who played a large part in the transition from impressionism and academic art to abstract art, symbolism and the other early movements of m ...
.
Biography
Born François Xavier Roussel in Lorry-lès-Metz,Moselle
The Moselle ( , ; german: Mosel ; lb, Musel ) is a river that rises in the Vosges mountains and flows through north-eastern France and Luxembourg to western Germany. It is a bank (geography), left bank tributary of the Rhine, which it jo ...
in 1867, at age fifteen he studied at the Lycée Condorcet
The Lycée Condorcet () is a school founded in 1803 in Paris, France, located at 8, rue du Havre, in the city's 9th arrondissement. It is one of the four oldest high schools in Paris and also one of the most prestigious. Since its inception, var ...
in Paris; alongside his friend Édouard Vuillard
Jean-Édouard Vuillard (; 11 November 186821 June 1940) was a French painter, decorative artist and printmaker. From 1891 through 1900, he was a prominent member of the Nabis, making paintings which assembled areas of pure color, and interior s ...
, he also studied at the studio of painter Diogène Maillart
Diogène Ulysse Napoléon Maillart (28 October 1840 – 3 August 1926) was a French painter, illustrator, designer, teacher and art critic.
Biography
He was born into a modest family of small farmers in Lachaussée-du-Bois-d'Écu. His first a ...
. In 1888, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts
École des Beaux-Arts (; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth century ...
, and soon began frequenting the Académie Julian
The Académie Julian () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907) that was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number a ...
where Maurice Denis
Maurice Denis (; 25 November 1870 – 13 November 1943) was a French painter, decorative artist, and writer. An important figure in the transitional period between impressionism and modern art, he is associated with '' Les Nabis'', symbolism, a ...
and other students formed the group ''Les Nabis''. In 1899, Roussel, Vuillard, and his another close friend, Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard (; 3 October 186723 January 1947) was a French painter, illustrator and printmaker, known especially for the stylized decorative qualities of his paintings and his bold use of color. A founding member of the Post-Impressionist ...
, travelled to Lake Como
Lake Como ( it, Lago di Como , ; lmo, label=Western Lombard, Lagh de Còmm , ''Cómm'' or ''Cùmm'' ), also known as Lario (; after the la, Larius Lacus), is a lake of glacial origin in Lombardy, Italy. It has an area of , making it the thir ...
, Venice, and Milan. In that year he settled in L'Étang-la-Ville, Yvelines
Yvelines () is a department in the western part of the Île-de-France region in Northern France. In 2019, it had a population of 1,448,207.Isadora Duncan
Angela Isadora Duncan (May 26, 1877 or May 27, 1878 – September 14, 1927) was an American dancer and choreographer, who was a pioneer of modern contemporary dance, who performed to great acclaim throughout Europe and the US. Born and raised in ...
. A number of paintings depict voyeuristic mythological and Old Testament episodes; one of his paintings illustrates Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...
's poem of 1876, '' L'après-midi d'un faune'', in which the faun creeps through rushes to spy on female bathers.
While Roussel expressed erotic joy in his bucolic pictures (the 'glorious blaze of the flesh' ), he also had a melancholy and dark side expressed in dark lithographic illustrations to works by Maurice de Guerin, ''La Bacchante'' and ''Le Centaure''. Between 1914 and 1917 he was admitted to a clinic, suffering from depression. He produced large numbers of pastels in his final years, between 1930 and 1944, picturing violent death in mythology.
Roussel is known for huge paintings of landscapes decorating public spaces, with others commissioned for private clients. In 1912 he painted the front curtain of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées
The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées () is an entertainment venue standing at 15 avenue Montaigne in Paris. It is situated near Avenue des Champs-Élysées, from which it takes its name. Its eponymous main hall may seat up to 1,905 people, while th ...
and in 1937-9 he created a huge eleven-metre panel in the debating chamber at the Palais des Nations (Palace of Nations
The Palace of Nations (french: Palais des Nations, ) is the home of the United Nations Office at Geneva, located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was built between 1929 and 1938 to serve as the headquarters of the League of Nations. It has served ...
) in Geneva. In 1926, Ker-Xavier Roussel won the Carnegie Prize
The Carnegie Prize is an international art prize awarded by the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It currently consists of a $10,000 cash prize accompanied by a gold medal.
History
The Carnegie Prize was established in 1896, to ...
for art. His reputation reached a peak in 1936 with a multi-panel scheme for the Palais de Chaillot
The Palais de Chaillot () is a building at the top of the in the Trocadéro area in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, 16th ''arrondissement'' of Paris, France.
For the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937) ...
.
Ker-Xavier Roussel died in 1944 at his home in L'Étang-la-Ville.
Roussel is mentioned in Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...
's ''Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'', Chapter 3. There she recounts an exchange he had with Theodore Duret in Vollard's shop at an uncertain date after 1904. Roussel complained of the lack of recognition that he and the other Nabi painters had to contend with. Duret consoled him by pointing out his incompatibility with the manners and fashions of the bourgeois world and the differences between "art" and "official art".
In 2019 he was rescued from the near oblivion into which he has generally fallen in modern times by a comprehensive exhibition, ''Ker-Xavier Roussel, Private Garden, Dreamed Garden'' at the Musée des Impressionnismes, Giverny.Exhibition Guide for Ker-Xavier Roussel, Private Garden, Dreamed Garden. Musée des Impressionnismes, Giverny, 2019.
Selected paintings
Île-de-France
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File:'The Sleeping Diana' by Ker-Xavier Roussel, c. 1924.jpg, The Sleeping Diana
References
* Frèches-Thory, Claire, & Perucchi-Petry, Ursula, ed.: ''Die Nabis: Propheten der Moderne'', Kunsthaus Zürich & Grand Palais, Paris & Prestel, Munich 1993 (German), (French)External links
* Paintings by Ker-Xavier Roussel @ WikiLivres''Pierre Bonnard, the Graphic Art''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Roussel (see index) {{DEFAULTSORT:Roussel 1867 births 1944 deaths 19th-century French painters French male painters 20th-century French painters 20th-century French male artists Les Nabis Post-impressionist painters École des Beaux-Arts alumni Lycée Condorcet alumni Académie Julian alumni 19th-century French male artists