Ker-Xavier Roussel
Original Prints: Lithographs
A major figure of the Nabi movement, Ker-Xavier Roussel (1867 - 1944) was known as the Nabi bucolique;
ostensibly since he moved out of Paris in 1899 to a country house in L'Étang-la-Ville (deep in the Marly forest), where he lived until his death.
He was one of
the founding members of the movement at the Académie Julian in 1889, having first met Edouard Vuillard at the Lycée Condorcet in 1884. They were quite close, so much so that Roussel married Vuillard's sister in 1893.
The most
synthetist of the group, early combining form and color to almost
abstract ends, after the turn of the century he moved to more classical representations and
artistic visions.
With regard to
his printmaking, Roussel worked mainly in lithography, collaborating
with Ambroise Vollard on several projects, though he also produced a
number of fine etchings.
Recently, he has regained a more prominent place in art history with several retrospective exhibitions:
- https://blog.bibliotheque.inha.fr/fr/posts/lithographies-ker-xavier-roussel.html
-
https://www.mdig.fr/expositions-et-activites/expositions/ker-xavier-roussel-jardin-prive-jardin-reve/
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L'Étang / Paysage avec maison
The Pond / Landscape with House
Salomon 13; Johnson 133
lithograph in five colours, 1897, a very
fine impression with variant colours, apparently a working proof aside
from the Vollard edition, signed in pencil by the artist recto, signed again on the verso and titled, "L'Étang", with full margins
This impression captures the
bright morning bedazzlement of Roussel's countryside surroundings,
treated in a bold "tachiste" handling of the medium.
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Centaure en haut d'une Montagne
Centaur atop a Mountain
Salomon, not described (close to the facsimile adjoining Alain's text, n° 20); Johnson, not described
lithograph, n.d.*, a
unique impression, extensively reworked with lithographic crayon by the artist, on
heavy cream wove paper, with full margins, with various working annotations by the
artist
This print relates to an illustration project undertaken by Ambroise Vollard in 1910 for Maurice Guerin's prose poem, Le Centaure, although Roussel never completed it.
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* Roussel's deep affinities for Antiquity and the publication of his Paysages led Ambroise Vollard to propose the illustration of Maurice de Guérin's two prose poems, Le Centaure & la Bacchante,
in 1910. (See
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k311542s?rk=21459;2) It
was however only in the 1930s that Roussel delivered his projects, and
the collaboration was never finalized.
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