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Lot Essay
The Fondation Georges Rouault has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
In the early 1930s, Marie Cuttoli, collector and patron of modern French art, commissioned Rouault to paint his first group of floral still lifes. Cuttoli was an admirer of the art of tapestry weaving, and made it her mission to revive it in the modern era by commissioning works from artists to use as cartoons (full-scale preparatory drawings) for tapestries. Rouault painted approximately thirty canvases for this purpose, and about ten tapestries were woven by the Aubusson craftsmen between 1930 and 1937. Rouault executed this series of Fleurs décoratives using a bright palette, framing the composition with prominent borders while clearly paying homage to the traditional art of tapestry making.
Bernard Dorival attributes the prevalence of flowers in the artist's mature work to his spiritual evolution in the post-war years, and to his discovery of "the beauty of nature, and of a Nature in which a radiant sun appears almost constantly... [and of] the beauty of one of the most marvellous of nature's creations: the flower" (B. Dorival and I. Rouault, Rouault: L'oeuvre peint, Monte-Carlo, 1988, vol. II, p. 14).
In the early 1930s, Marie Cuttoli, collector and patron of modern French art, commissioned Rouault to paint his first group of floral still lifes. Cuttoli was an admirer of the art of tapestry weaving, and made it her mission to revive it in the modern era by commissioning works from artists to use as cartoons (full-scale preparatory drawings) for tapestries. Rouault painted approximately thirty canvases for this purpose, and about ten tapestries were woven by the Aubusson craftsmen between 1930 and 1937. Rouault executed this series of Fleurs décoratives using a bright palette, framing the composition with prominent borders while clearly paying homage to the traditional art of tapestry making.
Bernard Dorival attributes the prevalence of flowers in the artist's mature work to his spiritual evolution in the post-war years, and to his discovery of "the beauty of nature, and of a Nature in which a radiant sun appears almost constantly... [and of] the beauty of one of the most marvellous of nature's creations: the flower" (B. Dorival and I. Rouault, Rouault: L'oeuvre peint, Monte-Carlo, 1988, vol. II, p. 14).