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Rouault was born on the 27th of May 1871, the son of a cabinetmaker. His earliest education came from his maternal grandfather, a humble post office employee. This man possessed an enviable knowledge of art and he passed that, and much encouragement on to his grandson. His parents entered him in school in 1880 and he loved it. His drawing teacher saw his promise right away and awarded him high praise. Rouault confessed in a letter to a friend that he was ‘a glutton for work even then.’ In his early teens, he was apprenticed to a stained glass artisan and there he learned to restore medieval stained glass windows (1885 - 1890). This experience left him with a ‘traditionalist mark’ and later these experiences would help him to maintain his own style even under the influence of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts that influenced its students to advocate only Italian art.
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Before he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he had been taking evening classes from the Ecole National des Arts Décoratifs for almost five years. The greatest relationship he made at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was that with Gustave Moreau, who would become his mentor and friend. Moreau, a quiet man, took the young Rouault under his wing. He encouraged him and challenged him. He treated him as a son and he wanted him to use his art as an expression of his true feelings. Though Moreau had a great effect on his pupil, we must not forget that from an early age, and throughout his life, Rouault would be influenced as greatly by the masters of the past, like Goya, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and DaVinci.
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Around the turn of the century, he radically changed and began working out new techniques and concepts. He was a co-founder and participant in the first Salon d’Automne of 1903 along with Matisse and other artists who would later be called Fauves. Although he was closely related to the Fauves, Rouault was never really one of them.
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For a short time he was fascinated with the life of the country, and used what he had learned from the School of Fine Art to paint and draw serene landscapes, often animated with busy figures. Later, he was inspired by sin and salvation and he would punctuate the ‘stupidity and bestiality’ of mankind in his paintings of prostitutes, judges, and tribunals. During the same period, he would paint various social scenes and religious subjects.
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In 1916, Rouault would undertake to illustrate a number of books at the advice of his dealer, Vollard. For the next twenty years, he devoted himself entirely to printmaking, to the exclusion of painting for the first ten. Out of this period came a masterful album of etchings and aquatints entitled, Miserere. He resumed painting in 1927 and had a large exhibition at the Petit Palais in 1937. For the rest of his life he concentrated on religious and social themes in his painting and produced some wonderful canvases. Along with painting and printmaking, Rouault made ceramics, designed the settings for Diaghilev’s production of Le Fils Prodigue, executed tapestries for Madame Cuttoli, and stained-glass windows for the church of Assy.
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This diverse artist, whose work in retrospect cannot be associated solely with one group, is highly thought of by private collectors and is represented in most of the major public collections of modern art.
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