Solitary Artist 1914-1930

An essential factor in the evolution of his work, from the 1920s, is the dominating adoption of oil paint. It inspires the artist by its qualities of concealment, suppleness and brilliance and, like printing, it allows him to satisfy his irrepressible need to make alterations to his work until all the parts of the picture find their definitive relationship. Rouault is a perfectionist, meticulous in the extreme; he incessantly comes back to what he writes and paints. His paintings are distinguished by the accumulation of layers and his letters are teeming with additions and deletions. He works on many pictures at once going from one painting to the other. He examines them then classifies them according to their degree of progress. Rouault is a patient worker who takes time to dream and to contemplate. He does not aim at speed of execution but speaks of “the blossoming of all that is deeply perceived and contemplated at length, far from the speed records of modern painting”.

This era of maturity sees Rouault’s technique noticeably evolve. Accustomed to spontaneously splashing the canvas with aquarelle and being able to rework it, he discovers, with printing techniques, the possibility of slowly bringing the work, by dint of labour and by successive stages, to its completion. The practice of printing also brings him a skill acquired from the rendering of light whilst the usage of oil renews his palette and offers him a material which finally suits him.

“’The dreadful thing about art is to know when to stop’, Bonnard said this. He is so right”.
Georges Rouault quoted by Claude Roulet

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