KER-XAVIER ROUSSEL
Nu Au Noeud Rose.

Pastel on tan wove paper, 1920. 220x257 mm; 8⅝x10⅛ inches. Initialed in pencil, lower right and lower left recto.

Provenance: Lillian Heidenberg Gallery, New York, with the label; Estate of Bruce Cohen, Washington, D.C.; thence by descent to the current owner.

Roussel (1867-1944) studied at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris alongside his friend and fellow artist Édouard Vuillard. In 1888, he enrolled in the École des Beaux-Arts, and soon began frequenting the Académie Julian, Paris, where Maurice Denis and other students formed the group Les Nabis. In 1899, Roussel, Vuillard, and another close artist friend, Pierre Bonnard, traveled to Lake Como, Venice and Milan. Later that year he settled in L'Étang-la-Ville, Yvelines, and the subject-matter of his paintings veered towards rural landscapes. He drew his subject matter from the area around L'Étang-la-Ville and Saint-Tropez, adapting the scenery to Greek mythological episodes depicting women, children, nymphs, centaurs and fauns. He abandoned the small format pictures typical of the Nabis and created large, brightly colored paintings in a Post Impressionist style. His paintings celebrated the seasons, abundance, drunkenness, lustful behavior and dance, the latter influenced by none other than the dancer Isadora Duncan.