Georges Rouault was born on May 27, 1871, in Paris, France, reportedly in a cellar where his mother had been carried after their house was struck by a stray shell during the Paris Commune uprising. His father was a cabinet-maker in a piano factory. Rouault’s paternal grandfather, an admirer of Édouard Manet and Honoré Daumier, hoped the child would become a painter.

As a teenager, Rouault was apprenticed to a stained-glass maker, an experience that profoundly influenced his later work as both a painter and printmaker. At the same time, he attended evening classes at the École des Arts Décoratifs and studied paintings at the Louvre. He later entered the École des Beaux-Arts under Élie Delaunay, and after Delaunay’s death became the favorite pupil and close friend of Gustave Moreau.

When Moreau died in 1898, Rouault was appointed director of the newly established Musée Gustave Moreau. Around this period, his parents left France to join their widowed daughter in Algeria. Rouault also spent time in Évian recovering from poor health and turned increasingly to landscape painting.

Rouault always viewed himself as an artisan—an anonymous laborer creating devotional images. He used bold black outlines to heighten the brilliance of color and expressive gesture, recalling mosaics and medieval stained glass. Drawing from a range of religious and symbolic traditions, he created deeply personal works exploring the human condition. His recurring subjects—prostitutes, tragic clowns, and biblical martyrs—reflect themes of suffering, alienation, and spiritual struggle.

In 1908, Rouault married Marthe Le Sidaner, and together they had four children. Although he exhibited with the Fauves, he was never closely aligned with the movement. Throughout the remainder of his career, he continued painting while also producing prints, illustrating books, and designing theatrical costumes and scenery.

Rouault died on February 13, 1958, in Paris, France.

Sources:
Venturi, Lionello. Rouault. Paris, 1940.
Master Paintings from the Phillips Collection. Washington, DC: The Phillips Collection.
Marks, Claude. World Artists 1950–80.
“Georges Rouault.” Encyclopaedia Britannica