Pasquale Iannetti Art Gallery

Original aquatint printed in colors on Montval wove paper. Signed with the artist's monogram and dated in the plate lower right, "GR 1938". A fine impression of Chapon/Rouault's second and final state, the etat definitif, from the edition of 250 (the first state consisted of 50 impressions printed in black ink only from the key plate). The seventh of twelve aquatints commissioned by Ambroise Vollard to illustrate the album Les Fleurs du Mal, text by Charles Baudelaire. The project was never realized but the aquatints were issued separately by the printer Roger Lacouriere. In excellent condition, with strong, fresh colors, printed on a sheet with full margins.

Image: 11 3/4" x 8 1/2", sheet: 17 1/2" x 13 3/8"
Catalogue Reference: Chapon/Rouault 280 b; Wofsy 278

Rouault worked on groups of prints inspired by Les Fleurs du Mal at various periods in his life, first fourteen plates in black and white in 1926-27, and around 1930 a further group that remained unfinished. Then finally, Rouault worked with the printer Lacouriere between 1936 and 1938, twelve completed aquatints in color, which included some of his very finest color prints, superbly rich in tone and imagery.

Rouault's admiration for Baudelaire stems from the period of his study with Gustave Moreau. In 1924 he drew a lithograph portrait of Baudelaire as the frontispiece to his group of essays about literary figures who had most influenced his art - Souvenirs Intimes. More than any other literary work Les Fleurs du Mal was central to the whole development of Symbolism, and the ideas of the Symbolists were crucial to Rouault's whole approach to art.