A very unusual painting which we are cataloguing as Circle of Georges Rouault as its signed once in full in the centre and once with a monogram lower right. It came from the clearance of a house and isn't included in the 1988 Raisonne of his work as far as we are aware.
An unusually narrow upright panel, roughly four times taller than it is wide, carrying four heads stacked one above the other like figures in a stained-glass lancet. That reference is almost certainly deliberate. Every form is enclosed in thick black contours drawn with a loaded brush, reproducing the effect of leaded came, and the palette — pink, cream, red, ochre, viridian and cobalt — is set against black in the manner of glass read against light. Rouault trained as a glazier's apprentice and the device never left his work.
The paint is heavily impasted, laid in short slabs that stand proud of the surface. The upper figure wears a soft cap; the second stares out with an enlarged central eye above a row of white teeth; the third is a profile against blue; the lowest is broad, frontal and mask-like.
Two inscriptions are present. A signature in full is brushed in red across the centre of the composition, worked into paint that was still wet rather than added later. A monogram appears separately. Neither is placed for display, which argues against fabrication — a forger signs once, legibly, where a buyer will look. The handling is nonetheless coarser than Rouault's mature manner, so the attribution should be left open rather than settled either way.
The deep stepped cream-painted frame, cracked at the mitres and marked with studio paint, appears original and should be retained.
