L'Administrateur colonial
Georges Rouault
1928
Heliogravure printed with sugar aquatint, etching and drypoint on Arches paper for Les Réincarnations du Père Ubu by Ambroise Vollard, Paris, Vollard éditeur, 1932
43,6 x 32,5 cm
Signed and dated by the artist in the lower left corner of the plate
Catalog raisonné : Rouault 16
Ambroise Vollard was Georges Rouault's dealer from the 1910s. Also an art publisher, Vollard commissioned numerous works from the painter, including illustrations for his own writings. Rouault produced twenty-one illustrations for Réincarnations du père Ubu, a book about Alfred Jarry's play Ubu Roi.
The engravings don't correspond exactly to Vollard's narrative line; the text is the starting point for an original adventure imagined by the artist. He elevatesUbu Roi's characters to archetypes: the crooked politician, the opportunistic voter, the ridiculous colonist... Thanks to their representation in the simplicity of a pause and the density of an atmosphere, they become timeless.
