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95

Georges Rouault

Cirque de l’étoile filante (Shooting Star Circus): six plates (C. & R. 244; 246-8; 250; 252)

Estimate
$3,000 - 5,000
$6,048
Lot Details
Six etchings with aquatint and drypoint in colors, on laid Montval paper, with full margins.
1934-38
all I. 12 x 8 1/4 in. (30.5 x 21 cm)
all S. 17 1/2 x 13 1/4 in. (44.5 x 33.7 cm)
All signed with initials and dated in the plate, from the edition of 250 (there were also 30 hors commerce in Roman numerals), published by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, 1938, all framed.
Catalogue Essay
Including: Jongleur (Juggler), plate 5; Madame Louison (Mrs. Louison), plate 7; Tristes os (Weary Bones), plate 8; Madame Carmencita (Mrs. Carmencita), plate 9; Master Arthur, plate 11; and Le Renchéri (The Preferred One), plate 13

About twelve years after asking his friend André Suarès to write a text on the circus, the last of Rouault's three or four attempts at creating this book was published. With a new title and text by the artist, the seventeen color plates were given a painterly effect through a process new to Rouault. Where he had formerly worked over photogravures made after his gouaches and paintings, this time he drew the heavy black outlines with sugar-lift aquatint. After he hand-colored the black-and-white proofs, the master printer Lacourière re-created the colored areas in aquatint, altering the values and tones as Rouault suggested. Riva Castleman, A Century of Artists Books, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1994, p. 88.

Georges Rouault

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