GEORGES ROUAULT (1871-1958) OLD ORIENT, 1945-1946 Oil on paper mounted on canvas Signed lower left Oil on paper laid on canvas; signed lower left 33,5 X 31 CM - 13 1/4 X 12 1/4 IN. PROVENANCE Collection Robert B. and Béatrice C. Mayer, United States. Sale, Paris, Me Étienne Libert, 1975. Private collection, France. Then by descent to the present owner. BIBLIOGRAPHY Isabelle Rouault, Rouault l'œuvre peint, volume II, Éditions Sauret, Monte-Carlo: 1988, n° 2192bis, p. 201 (reproduced in black and white). From 1906 Rouault takes an interest in ceramics in the studio of André Metthey in Asnières. There he meets the famous dealer Ambroise Vollard, who has already taken Renoir, Cézanne and Picasso under his wing. Vollard quickly offers him an exclusive contract for his earthenware works, which Rouault refuses. It is only in 1913, after having approached the artist, that Vollard obtains to buy his entire studio: 770 works, some of them still unfinished. They will be linked by this exclusivity for more than twenty-five years. Rouault and Vollard maintained a relationship of trust, helping each other in particular to preserve numerous works during the Great War. From 1925 onwards, the artist agrees to set up his studio on the top floor of Vollard's mansion on rue Martignac, a way for the dealer to keep an eye on the painter's output. Rouault will work day and night to fulfil orders and complete his paintings. The following years are marked by Rouault's recognition and success in France and in the United States where Pierre Matisse becomes his representative. But the painter does not take kindly to the pressure of the increasing number of commissions and his relationship with Vollard deteriorates as the dealer demands too much. Everything came to an abrupt end on July 22, 1939, when Ambroise Vollard died in a car accident. On September 1st, the Second World War broke out. Affected by the death of his dealer, he nonetheless felt freed from the obligation to deliver the numerous orders imposed by Vollard on time. The painter now wished to devote himself to a subject that he had not yet explored: landscape. Very quickly, he is caught by Vollard's heirs who have sealed his studio in order to retain ownership of the hundreds of works there. Not only is Rouault deprived of his studio, but in 1942 he discovers that one of his unfinished paintings is being auctioned. He then decides to sue the heirs to recover the property of his production. In 1947, he emerged from these difficult years as a winner, in a letter to his friend Jacques Maritain: "What a waste of time from 1939 to 1946 and at Vollard too, what a waste of time... precious time, especially at my age, with presumptuous heirs for odious squabbles" (letter of 15 January 1946 / on art and on life, p. 173) Leaving these quarrels behind him and turning to his success across the Atlantic during the war, Rouault resumes his work and finally devotes himself to landscape painting. The work we are presenting, Vieil orient, dated 1945-1946, is one of those paintings begun around 1930 and condemned to wait for years. But in 1945, Me Decaux, the receiver of the trial, returned twelve of these paintings to the artist so that he could complete and sign them. ["...] His last great period, that of legendary or biblical landscapes. Warm tones, red, orange, yellow, impose themselves. An intense calm, a peaceful serenity emanates from the scenes. These landscapes are almost all animated by travellers, marginal people, boatmen, wanderers or fugitives who, sometimes, meet Christ. [...] The frequent use of black rings in the unfinished paintings, like linear abbreviations, reinforces their decorative effect, while separating the coloured surfaces in the manner of stained-glass leads. Trained as a glassmaker in his youth, Rouault seems not to have forgotten his first sources of inspiration. [...] A desire for ornamental stylization is revealed in particular after 1930, the women's bodies undulate in serpentine curves, intertwining like living arabesques and sometimes transforming themselves into women-amphorae." Over the years Rouault intensifies the palette of his paintings, "but also their texture, the pictorial material of his canvases becoming (...) more impasto, thicker. On his canvases laid flat in front of him, the painter applies layers one after the other, working them like a sculptor or a craftsman." Angelina Lampe.