Mar 14, 2024 - Sale 2662

Sale 2662 - Lot 305

Price Realized: $ 4,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 8,000
GEORGES ROUAULT
Automne.

Color aquatint, 1938. 510x665 mm; 20⅛x26¼ inches, full margins. Edition of 175. Printed by Lacourière, Paris. Published by Vollard, Paris. A very good, richly-inked impression with vibrant colors.

Rouault (1871-1958) was among the foremost printmakers of the early 20th century, translating his heavily-contoured, colorful paintings into richly-inked, painterly aquatints with the help of the Parisian master-printer, Roger Lacourière. In the late 1880s, Rouault had trained as an apprentice with a glass painter and restorer and, in the early 1890s, studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris, under the symbolist master, Gustave Moreau (1826-1898). Both these experiences certainly influenced his style, as did his friendships at the turn-of-the-century with some of the leading Fauves, including Henri Matisse, Albert Marquet and Henri Manguin.

Automne is Rouault's tour-de-force and a secular stand-out in a printmaking oeuvre with a concentration on religious, spiritual and Biblical themes. It is among his most colorful, technically complex and largest prints, as well as a precursor to the large aquatints favored by Picasso and Matisse from the 1950s and 1960s. Chapon/Rouault 288; Wofsy 285.