A doctor's son, he was educated at the Lycee Condorcet in Paris, and made the acquaintance of Edouard Vuillard, later his brother-in-law. Drawn towards painting, he studied under Bouguereau and Jules Lefebvre at the Academie Julian. However, increasingly attracted by the innovations of the Nabis, he joined the group and from 1899 onwards exhibited at the Nabist exhibitions at the Cafe Volpini and Le Barc de Boutteville. He frequently entertained his friends, Serusier in particular, at his residence in l'Etang-IaVille. In 1905 he and Maurice Denis went on a cycling tour of the south of France, where they visited Cezanne. Throughout his life Roussel was to choose sunsoaked landscapes as his subjects, and to use increasingly bright colours. His cheerful, distinctive style, his world of nymphs and fauns beneath cloudless skies, dated from this decisive contact with Cezanne. Hence his Diana is bathed in near-Impressionist light, while the Nabist colouring grey, cool yellow, green and cream-of his huge panel depicting The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus is relieved by the distant glowing red of the fleeing ravisher's tunic. Among his best-known works mention must be made of the curtain at the Comedie des Champs-Elysees, a vast decorative work at the Geneva Palace of Nations, entitled Pax Nutrix, and Dance at the Palais de Chaillot, Paris.

Post-Impressionism, Michel-Claude Jalard, Edito Service SA, Geneva