Georges Rouault
1871 - 1956
Christ before Pilate
Oil on paper laid down on canvas; stamped with the studio mark; and signed by Isabelle Rouault on the verso canvas and stretcher.
7.25 x 5.2 inches; 18.5 x 13 cms.
Provenance: The Estate of the Artist.
Private collection.
To André Suarès 3.3.1913
I have that other joy: that I am alone….I know that I breathe pure air, and that my suffering will soon be transformed into creative joy, in spite of difficulties which more than once I thought would crush me.
During these last fifteen years, many of my colleagues have become established and settled. I seem merely to have strayed. To know yourself, not through discussion, analysis and verbiage, but through suffering and in suffering, to know yourself through living and in living, far from snobbery and the contrived, but through seeking the truth with the effort of our whole being.
To measure oneself; to know how to stretch and also how to relax; to be master of one’s imagination, of one’s nerves, of the excitement of one’s blood, one’s mad rages and one’s holy anger on account of the Injustice which rules the world, or at other times to let them go without apprehension and without fear, knowing that in an instant, one will be able to master them. That is the apprenticeship of life; and art that springs from it will never be castrated.