![Georges Rouault -Christ in the Suburbs 1920-24](https://redtreetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/georges-rouault-christ-in-the-suburbs-1920-24.jpg?w=500)
Georges Rouault -Christ in the Suburbs
Anyone can revolt. It is more difficult silently to obey our own inner promptings, and to spend our lives finding sincere and fitting means of expression for our temperament and our gifts.
–Georges Rouault
I’ve been a big fan of French painter/printmaker Georges Rouault (1871-1958) from the moment many years ago when I stumbled across a copy of Miserere, a book of his deeply expressionistic etchings. The title translates as Mercy and it contained raw and expressive work that dealt with deeply personal and religious themes along with those inner promptings, as he calls them in the quote above. It was a work that was very influential on my early Exiles series.
His entrance into the world of art was serving, at the age of fourteen, as an apprentice glass painter and restorer which shows itself in his mature work which resembles leaded glass windows with its dark dividing lines and glowing colors that feel sometimes as though they are lit from behind with the light shining through. Both are qualities that excited me and made me want to emulate in my own work. Not to mention the purity a of the emotional feeling throughout.
Now, if only I can obey my own inner promptings…
The section above is a replay of a blog entry that ran back in 2017. In the interim, I came across some of Rouault’s other writings. He wrote of being an artist in a way with which I easily identified. For example, in his 1947 album of work, Stella Vespertina, he wrote:
The painter who loves his art is ruler in his own kingdom, even if he be in Lilliput and a Lilliputian himself. He transforms a kitchen maid into a fairy, and a great lady into a brothel matron, if he wants to and sees them so, for he is a seer. His vision includes everything that is alive in the past.
This idea of being ruler over one’s own kingdom as an artist has always been a huge attraction to this profession for me. To be able to set the rules, to discard convention, to put the world in order as I see it and answer to only my vision– these were all things that drew me in. And it didn’t matter that it might be a tiny, insignificant kingdom ruled by a tiny, insignificant king– it was mine.
Rouault also wrote in Stella Vespertina:
The conscience of an artist worthy of the name is like an incurable disease which causes him endless torment but occasionally fills him with silent joy…
Like the passage about the artist’s Lilliputian kingdom, it rang true. Though I love what I do, it is often frustrating and tormenting and certainly never as easy as it might seem. But it is in those moments of silent joy, as he puts it, that there is the ultimate reward. A sense of completion.
And also in Stella Vespertina:
The old masters are perfect and admirable examples, on condition that we remember that the spirit gives life and the letter kills, and that even the best pastiche is inferior to the harmonious stammering or incoherence of a child trying to speak.
He is basically saying that even the most perfectly crafted piece of art can sometimes lack the life and spirit found in those imperfect aspects of our world, those things and moments that give our lives depth and meaning.
I don’t think I can add to that except to say that I am glad to have stumbled across Rouault those many years ago in an old book store.
![Georges Rouault Sunset 1937](https://redtreetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/georges-rouault-sunset-1937.jpg?w=500)
Georges Rouault- Sunset, 1937
![Georges Roualt Automne ou Nazareth](https://redtreetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/georges-roualt-automne-ou-nazareth.jpeg?w=500)
Georges Roualt – Automne ou Nazareth
![georges rouault- landscape with large trees](https://redtreetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/georges-rouault-landscape-with-large-trees.jpeg?w=500)
Georges Rouault — Landscape with Large Trees
![georges rouault- landscape with large trees](https://redtreetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/georges-rouault-landscape-with-large-trees.jpeg?w=500)
Georges Rouault — Landscape with Large Trees
![Georges Rouault Misere Images](https://redtreetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/georges-rouault-misere-images.jpg?w=500)
Georges Rouault – Miserere Images
![Georges Rouault Three Clowns](https://redtreetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/georges-rouault-three-clowns.jpg?w=500)
Georges Rouault -Three Clowns
![Georges Rouault The Old King](https://redtreetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/georges-rouault-the-old-king.jpg?w=500)
Georges Rouault- The Old King, 1936
Wow Gary.. I can really see how much you were influenced by Rouault. The use of color, your icon series, your faces series… You really spoke to the artist in you.
Thanks, Gary. The interesting thing is that when I first came across Rouault in the book, Miserere, the images were all in black and white, like the one image in today’s blog with 12 separate grayscale images from the book. Seeing his colors came later, after his influence was already in place. I still almost always take away something new from looking at his work.