ON VIEW

Description

The Wounded Clown depicts three male figures in conical hats, set against a bleak landscape. On the left a full moon (with only a crescent visible) floats above a barren tree. In the background, a mountain rises up toward the right, following the line of the figures’ shoulders, bent necks, and tilted heads. Two of the men sport blue costumes with white collars; the third, central figure wears red. All three wear short, cuffed knickers or pantaloons, exposing their thin legs. The figure on the left, the smallest of the group, crouches into a seated position and looks forward, gesturing to his companions; the other two stand upright, eyes downcast and knees locked together. Their hands and forearms lie atop one another as they embrace. The hand of the central figure is marked with red.

Though their bodies are shown frontally, the faces of these figures are shown in profile. Heavy, black lines, used throughout the composition, outline their features. The picture is painted in oils on paper, and has been mounted vertically onto a large Masonite board.

Context and Analysis

The Wounded Clown is perhaps Georges Rouault’s most deeply introspective work. It forms part of a series of paintings executed after 1902, depicting clowns and other circus performers. This monumental figure painting rejects narrative in favor of a more symbolic meaning. It appears to summarize Rouault’s pessimism over the modern human condition and his deepest religious beliefs.

In the clown, Rouault found a poignant emblem of love and self-sacrifice, as well as a figure of masked sorrow and victimization. Cast into the public arena and spared no humiliation, despite his inner pain, the clown transforms into a representation of Jesus in Rouault’s devout hands. The details of this picture—the dead tree, the wound on the central figure’s hand, and the hint of a lunar eclipse—create a compelling allegory for the descent of Jesus from the cross, and for human salvation through compassion. The reference to wounds in the title of this work may again refer to Jesus and to Rouault’s religious faith. Supporting evidence for this connection occurs in a print series, Miserere, that Rouault completed in 1927; plate 58, which depicts the Holy Countenance on Veronica’s veil, is entitled: “It is by his wounds that we are healed.”

Rouault adapted his clown motif across a variety of mediums during the course of his career. In 1932 he painted a version of The Wounded Clown, one of at least five such sketches and variants, as a cartoon for a tapestry designed by the Aubusson factory in France.


Connections

The tragicomic existence of the clown has fascinated artists for centuries. The Currier’s collection includes several images of clowns, in a variety of mediums and from different historical periods (Currier, 1986.18.69, 2001.1.1, 1985.40.15, 2008.4.52).

Rouault’s most characteristic formal qualities of the 1930s—black outlining pointedly recalling stained glass and a profusion of pastel color—offer a comparison to the work of such artists as Marsden Hartley, Karl Knath, and William Zorach (Currier, 1965.4, 1959.2, 1959.9, 1987.4). Rouault’s allusion to a lunar eclipse, like the one that Christians believed to have taken place on the day of the crucifixion of Jesus, is represented elsewhere in the Currier’s collection (Currier, 2010.26.10.10).

The Currier owns one additional painting by Rouault, The Glorious Virgin (Currier, 2003.27).

Written by Emily M. Weeks, Ph.D.

Bibliography

Bransten, Ellen H. “The Significance of the Clown in Paintings by Daumier, Picasso and Rouault.” Pacific Art Review (1944): 21–39.

Clair, Jean, ed. The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown. Exh. cat. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Lansner, Kermit. “Georges Rouault: As Seen in the Retrospective Exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art at New York.” Kenyon Review 15, no. 3 (Summer 1953): 455–60.

Mooney, Gael. “Georges Rouault: Encountering God’s Beauty through the Face of the Other.” In Violence, Transformation, and the Sacred: “They Shall Be Called Children of God,” ed. Margaret R. Pfeil and Tobias L. Winright. Annual Publication of the College Theology Society 57. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2012, 99–114.

Schloesser, Stephen. Mystic Masque: Semblance and Reality in Georges Rouault (1871–1958) . Exh. cat. Chestnut Hill, MA: McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College; distributed by University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Waldron, Ann. “Rouault’s Clowns.” Realities 2 (February 1979): 35–43.

“The Wounded Clown: A Painting by Georges Rouault (1871-1958): A Thirty-Fifth Anniversary Acquisition.” Currier Gallery of Art Bulletin (May–June 1964): n.p.