American expatriate artist Faun Roberts first met George Rouault in a bar in Berne. Roberts was taking the cure at the notorious Abführmittel Sanatorium on the outskirts of Koniz. Roualt was in Switzerland looking for God.
Considering their differences, they hit it off famously.
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| Santir ma Chatte, Faun Roberts, 1924 |
Who exactly influenced whom is an issue that till now has been under-addressed. The marginalization of female artists in general and Faun Roberts in particular is much more than just an egregious academic oversight. It speaks of a culture of gender bias that stretches well into the mid eighteenth century. Whether it deals with Delacroix and Cecilia Montoya, the until now little known Romantic painter and librettist known mostly for her frescoes in l'église de Sainte-Agnès de l'Oreille in Charleroi, or Bouguereau and his infinitely more talented model Filida Tonerea whose sketches supplied many if not most of the compositional ideas behind La Naissance de Vénus and Nymphaeum. And of course when it concerns the relationship between Faun Roberts and the likes of Rouault, Picasso, Dufy and Derain.
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| Reine de Cirque, George Rouault |
The images are now finally allowed to speak for themselves and it is only a matter of time for the historical record to be corrected. I can only hope that the auction houses follow suit.
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