Ker-Xavier Roussel (10 December 1867 – 6 June 1944) was a French painter associated with

Les Nabis The 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 modernism. The me ...

Biography

Born François Xavier Roussel in

Lorry-lès-Metz Lorry-lès-Metz (, literally ''Lorry near Metz''; ) is a commune in the Moselle department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. See also * Communes of the Moselle department The following is a list of the 725 communes of the Moselle de ...

Moselle The Moselle ( , ; ; ) 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 joins at Koblenz. A sm ...

in 1867, at age fifteen he studied at the

Lycée Condorcet The Lycée Condorcet () is a secondary school in Paris, France, located at 8, rue du Havre, in the city's 9th arrondissement. Founded in 1803, it is one of the four oldest high schools in Paris and also one of the most prestigious. Since its inc ...

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, Vuillard was a member of the avant garde artistic group Les Nabis, creating paintings that assembled areas ...

, 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 in Lachaussée-du-Bois-d'Écu. His first art lessons were at the "Imperial School ...

. In 1888, he enrolled in the

École des Beaux-Arts ; ) refers to a number of influential art schools in France. The term is associated with the Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts style in architecture and city planning that thrived in France and other countries during the late nineteenth centu ...

, and soon began frequenting the

Académie Julian The () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907). The school was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number and qual ...

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, ...

and other students formed the group ''Les Nabis''. In 1899, Roussel, Vuillard, and his 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 gr ...

, travelled to

Lake Como Lake Como ( , ) also known as Lario, is a lake of glacial origin in Lombardy, Italy. It has an area of , making it the third-largest lake in Italy, after Lake Garda and Lake Maggiore. At over deep, it is one of the deepest lakes in Europe. ...

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

, and

Milan Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nea ...

. 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.Saint-Tropez Saint-Tropez ( , ; ) is a Communes of France, commune in the Var (department), Var departments of France, department and the regions of France, region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Southern France. It is west of Nice and east of Marseille, o ...

, adapting the scenery to Greek mythological episodes depicting women, children, nymphs, centaurs and fauns. His wife Marie (Vuillard's sister), his daughter Annette, his son Jacques and his grandchildren served as models. He abandoned the small format pictures typical of the Nabis and created large, brightly coloured paintings in a post-impressionist style. His paintings celebrated the seasons, abundance, drunkenness, lustful behaviour and dance, the latter influenced by

Isadora Duncan Angela Isadora Duncan (May 26, 1877, or May 27, 1878 – September 14, 1927) was an American-born dancer and choreographer, who was a pioneer of modern contemporary dance and performed to great acclaim throughout Europe and the United States. Bor ...

. 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 o ...

'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) 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, t ...

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, France. Design The building was designed in classicising " moderne" style by architects Louis-Hippolyte Boileau, Jacques ...

. 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 Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh), and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and ...

'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

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,

Île-de-France The Île-de-France (; ; ) is the most populous of the eighteen regions of France, with an official estimated population of 12,271,794 residents on 1 January 2023. Centered on the capital Paris, it is located in the north-central part of the cou ...

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

''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 Nabis (art) French Post-impressionist painters École des Beaux-Arts alumni Lycée Condorcet alumni Académie Julian alumni 19th-century French male artists