Pastorales

Fine lithograph on ivory colored China paper. Signature on plate on the lower right margin. Beautiful artwork representing a bucolic scene.

Excellent conditions, including cardboard passepartout of 35 x 50 cm.

Ker-Xavier Roussel (Lorry-les-Metz,1867 – L'Étang-La-Ville, 1944), the French artist, together with his friend Édouard Vuillard , studied at the artist studio of the painter Diogène Maillart. In 1888, he attended the École des Beaux-Arts, and then he studied at the Académie Julian where Maurice Denis and other artists formed the group Les Nabis , shifting towards mythological compositions with clear and luminous palettes of color. As a matter of fact, he is well-known for his paintings of French landscapes, usually depicting nymphs and fauns, women, and children in bucolic settings. In Gertrude Stein's Autobiography o f Alice B. Toklas, Roussel is mentioned as follows: she recounts an interesting exchange Roussel had with Theodore Duret in Vollard's shop (in 1904). Roussel complained about the lack of recognition that the Nabi painters had to put up with. Duret consoled him by pointing out his incompatibility with the trends and manners of the middle-class society, and emphasizing the considerable differences between "art" and "official art”.