Hyppolite Roger
The Blue Vase
Mid 20th Century

About the Item

French Mid 20th Century oil on board Fauvist still life, flowers in a vase in an interior scene, by Hyppolite Roger. The painting is signed bottom right and there is also an atelier stamp to the back of the board. Roger worked in and around Nice in the South of France and all their paintings are full of the colour and joy of that part of the world. The painting is presented in a very fine, period wood and gilt frame A wonderful, vibrant and colourful painting of a subject loved by artists over the centuries. A bunch of bright red flowers, possibly poppies, arranged in a simple French Provencale vessel, with the background of a farmhouse table and stool. Hyppolite loved the use of colour, much influenced by the Fauve movement, and this does not disappoint. Fauvism was a style of painting that flourished in France around the turn of the 20th century. Fauve artists used pure, brilliant colour aggressively applied straight from the paint tubes to create a sense of an explosion on the canvas. The Fauves painted directly from nature, as the Impressionists had before them, but Fauvist works were invested with a strong expressive reaction to the subjects portrayed. First formally exhibited in Paris in 1905, Fauvist paintings shocked visitors to the annual Salon d’Automne; one of these visitors was the critic Louis Vauxcelles, who, because of the violence of their works, dubbed the painters fauves (“wild beasts”). The leader of the group was Henri Matisse, who had arrived at the Fauve style after experimenting with the various Post-Impressionist approaches of Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Georges Seurat. Matisse’s studies led him to reject traditional renderings of three-dimensional space and to seek instead a new picture space defined by movement of colour. He exhibited his famous Woman with the Hat at the 1905 exhibition. In this painting, brisk strokes of colour—blues, greens, and reds—form an energetic, expressive view of the woman. The crude paint application, which left areas of raw canvas exposed, was appalling to viewers at the time.

Creator:

Hyppolite Roger (French)

Creation Year:

Mid 20th Century

Dimensions:

Height: 20 in (50.8 cm)Width: 17 in (43.18 cm)Depth: 1.5 in (3.81 cm)

Medium:

Board,Oil

Movement & Style:

Fauvist

Period:

Mid-20th Century