Roland Oudot

ROLAND OUDOT (Paris, 1897-1981).
"Female portrait", 1930s.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner.
Measurements: 72 x 58 cm; 96 x 82 cm (frame).

Exquisite female portrait by the French painter Roland Oudot in which is represented an elegantly dressed woman holding her hat. In the background a simple landscape is drawn with a sky illuminated by the light of the sunset and a vegetal shadow behind the represented one. Thanks to the sparse drawing and the thick brushstrokes, we can see in this work a clear influence of the post-impressionist forms of great painters such as Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard. The gaze of the woman is lost to the left, as if observing something outside the canvas that escapes our knowledge. The muted colors such as beige and blue contrast with the dark reddish and especially with the large black strokes that create a sense of sadness and melancholy conveyed by the work.
Roland Oudot was a painter and lithographer trained at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (of which he would later become a professor) between 1912 and 1915, in the workshop of Eugène Edouard Morand. In 1915 he became Léon Bakst's assistant for the Ballets Russes (until Bakst's death in 1923), and it was he who introduced him to the painting of Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, the first two of whom would exert a lasting influence on him. At the same time, between 1919 and 1920, he worked as a furniture and fabric designer for Louis Süe and André Mare. Influenced by the modernism of early 20th century painting, in particular by the Fauves and the Cubists, his work also evolved by taking elements from the French landscape tradition, marked by the figure of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot. His works are exhibited in major institutions such as the Pompidou Center.