Ker Xavier ROUSSEL (Lorry les Metz 1867 - L'Etang la Ville 1 - Lot 36

Ker Xavier ROUSSEL (Lorry les Metz 1867 - L'Etang la Ville 1944). Orpheus and Eurydice chasing the maenads. Pastel on paper. Signed lower left. Size : 30 x 100 cm. Provenance: Estate of Monsieur Louis Thirion, furniture from the private mansion built in 1923 by Gibert et Ogé, which has remained in the family ever since. Ker Xavier Roussel was a French painter associated with the artistic movement known as Les Nabis. He was born on December 10, 1867 in Lorry-lès-Metz, Moselle, and died on June 6, 1944 at his home in L'Étang-la-Ville, Yvelines. Roussel began his artistic training at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, where he studied alongside his friend Édouard Vuillard. He also studied at the studio of the painter Diogène Maillart. Roussel's work often depicts bucolic scenes with an emphasis on erotic joy, but he also has a dark, melancholy side, as shown by his sombre lithographic illustrations for the works of Maurice de Guérin. Between 1914 and 1917, he suffered from depression and was admitted to a clinic. In his last years, between 1930 and 1944, he produced a large number of pastels depicting violent death in mythology. Roussel's father and brother were homeopaths, and he was Jean-Édouard Vuillard's brother-in-law. He was also friends with Guillaume Apollinaire and Paul Gauguin.