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Sitting Naked [Nu Assis]

Georges Rouault

Framed size: 13.5 in. (h) x 11.5 in. (w) x 1 in. (d)

$1,500.00

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Etching, Figurative, Framed, Intaglio Print, Portraits and People, Post-War Twentieth Century, Pre-War Twentieth Century, Prints & Multiples, Rouault, Social Commentary and History

About the work

Nu Assis [Sitting Naked] is plate number 21 from Ambroise Vollard’s famous Les Réincarnations du Père Ubu.

French artist Georges Rouault was a pioneering expressionist painter and a major figure in modern printmaking. His work is immediately recognizable for the thick black brushstrokes that outline their subjects.

Rather than create pleasing “armchair” pictures like those of many of his contemporaries, Rouault applied his dramatic and intense painterly style to religious subjects, clowns, and circus performers, using these motifs to reflect on religion, morality, and modern life.

In 1896, French playwright Alfred Jarry premiered his play, Ubu Roi (“Ubu the King”). It was first performed in Paris at the Théâtre de l’Œuvre, causing a near-riot in the audience. Ubu Roi is a comic and bizarre play. Ubu Roi is infantile, glutinous, dishonest, greedy, a bully, an ingrate, a coward, and abusive of those weaker and even more cowardly than he. And, most of all, Jarry’s Ubu Roi is a metaphor for Jarry’s view of the modern man. It is a satire of the exercise of power and greed by the bourgeoisie abusing the authority engendered by their success. Many audience members were horrified by the childishness, obscenity, and disrespect permeating the play, but to others it was an event of revolutionary importance. The play became infamous and its author an avant-garde hero. Indeed, it is now recognized as a pivotal event to the start of Twentieth Century modernism and Surrealism.

Parisian art publisher and dealer Ambroise Vollard (1866-1939) was fascinated—even obsessed—with Ubu Roi. In 1932, Vollard published his own sequel to Ubu Roi, the Réincarnations de Père Ubu. Vollard recruited Rouault to prepare illustrations to it. Vollard’s version of the story contained twenty-two illustrations by Rouault.

Rouault’s illustrations for Réincarnations de Père Ubu marked Rouault’s earliest use of photogravure techniques, and display a combination of etching and aquatint.

Examples of this work are held in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and many other important museums.

Attributes	Value
Medium	Etching
Signing, Dating, and Titling	Signed in the plate
Framing	Custom framed and matted
Condition	Fine Condition
Date	1920-1940
Type	Old Etchings

Medium:

Etching soft-ground, roulette, and aquatint on Arches laid paper.

Paper:

White Rives wove paper

Date:

1929

Signature:

Initialed and dated in the plate bottom right

Publisher:

Ambroise Vollard, Paris

Edition:

One of the edition of 305 (plus 30 Hors Commerce)

Framing:

Remains in the fine wood frame and cloth-wrapped matting made by Gallery 63 from its first exhibition by Associated American Artists, but reframed in conservation-grade materials.

Condition:

Excellent condition.

Framed Size:

13.5 in. (h) x 11.5 in. (w) x 1 in. (d)

Image Size:

3 in. (h) x 2.125 in. (w)

Literature:

Chapon-Roualt 20.f.