Georges Rouault

Ambroise Vollard, Paris
Madame De Galéa, Paris
Rabaté
Arthur Tooth & Sons, London
Acquired from the above by the late owner in June 1965

Bernard Dorival & Isabelle Rouault, Rouault, L'Œuvre peint, Monte Carlo, 1988, vol. II, no. 2392, illustrated p. 242

Executed on cradled panel; the panel is sound. There is a milky layer of varnish preventing UV light from fully penetrating, however UV examination does not appear to reveal any evidence of re-touching. There is some pigment loss at the upper two corners associated with some panel loss. There is some rubbing and associated stable pigment losses to all four edges. There are fine lines of interconnected craquelure running around the face, and some further fine lines of paint shrinkage predominantly to the blue and black pigments around the perimeter of the painting. There is a fly spot at the upper part of the vertical cream band to the centre of the upper right quadrant. A nail is visible at the centre of the extreme lower edge, probably consistent with the artist's working process. There is a lovely thick impasto and this work is in overall very good condition.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The following group of five works were in the private collection of Lord and Lady Attenborough for many years. Richard Attenborough was a celebrated English award-winning film actor, director and producer. He was also the President of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Richard Attenborough and his wife, the English actress Sheila Sim, were married for 69 years, during which time they passionately collected works of art for their London home. Parts of their impressive collection of Modern British art, including works by Laurence Lowry, Graham Sutherland, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson and Edward Burra, were sold at Sotheby's London in 2009, and more recently in November 2016, alongside a large collection of Picasso ceramics acquired during their summer holidays near Vallauris in the south of France.

Powerful yet also profoundly meditative, La Sainte Face depicts the head of Christ in seeming isolation from the world around him. Georges Rouault was a deeply religious figure whose art intimately reflected his beliefs and devotion. James Thrall Soby notes that: ‘to Rouault, [religion] was… to become the sum - or very nearly the sum - of personal experience and emotion’ (quoted in Georges Rouault Paintings and Prints (exhibition catalogue), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1947, p. 9). Having originally trained as an apprentice in a stained glass workshop, Rouault’s distinctive style owed much to his life-long fascination with this medium, with the bold black lines used to delineate form within his paintings referencing in particular his interest in medieval glass. The present work was a particular favourite of Lord and Lady Attenborough’s, and was displayed in a prominent setting above their fireplace in the drawing room of their home, Old Friars.