Clown 1913

Georges Rouault painted this Clown with oil on paper. There is a lot of darkness in this image, heavy blues and blacks, but then these flashes of bright colour, the hat, the red arm – they really grab your attention. You can see the hand of the artist here, the brushstrokes are alive. There's a real physicality to the paint, it’s almost sculptural in places. You can see how Rouault has layered the colours, like he’s building up the image from the surface. Look at the way he’s handled the arm, that vivid red, how he uses it to cut through the darkness. It’s like a slash of emotion. It’s not just about the visual, it’s about how the paint feels, how it sits on the surface. Rouault reminds me of someone like Francis Bacon in his handling of the figure, that same sense of distortion and intensity. But where Bacon is all about existential angst, Rouault has this underlying compassion. He is an artist who knew the value of letting the paint do its thing.