Artwork Information

In 1917 Ambroise Vollard asked Rouault to illustrate a text he had written about Alfred Jarry's character, père Ubu. He based his first illustration for the series on a black man he had seen in a revue staged in Paris. In the 1920s Paris was in the grip of what has been called negrophilia, a passion for objects and people with links to black Africa. They believed that western society, seen as decadent and crumbling after the horrors of the first world war, could learn from what were perceived as 'simple' societies.