Art Inconnu - Little-known and under-appreciated art.: Vera Rockline (1896-1934)

Sunday, 19 April 2009

Vera Rockline (1896-1934)

"Vue de Tiflis, Georgia" 1917

75 years ago this month Vera Rockline committed suicide in Paris. She was a powerful personality who forged a notable career in the Montparnasse of the 1920's and 30's and although very little is known of her brief existence, it was said that her life was "full of aspirations and contrasts." She was born Vera Schlezinger Rockline in Moscow in 1896 to a Russian father and a mother from Burgundy.

"Still life"

She studied under Ilia Mashkov in Russia and Alexander Exter in Kiev before moving to Paris after the First World War where her style shifted from the abrasive gloom of her early works to the lighter, softer nudes and portraits of her mature period where she worked free of the cubist teachings of Exter. She was influenced by Matisse and particularly Cezanne but largely ignored the influence of the impressionists, instead looking towards the painters of Seville whom she copied as a method of learning.

"Still life with lilies"

"Still life"

She was a popular figure amongst the Russian expatriates living in Montparnasse and she enjoyed artistic success too, showing her work at the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d'Automne. One of her most passionate supporters was the fashion designer Paul Poiret, who bought two of her paintings and campaigned regularly on her behalf. Poiret, who was a knowledgeable art collector and enthusiast, wrote an encouraging preface to her first solo exhibition at Galerie Charles Vildrac in 1925. She continued to exhibit to great acclaim in numerous Paris galleries throughout the 1920s, including Galerie Bernheim, Galerie le Studio and Galerie Barreiro from 1930.

"The Wrestlers"

The complexity of her personality and her somewhat exotic tastes are reflected in the original character of her canvasses - works such as "Le Guitariste" 1925, "Victuailles" 1925 and her series of nudes and portraits. In these she admires the voluptuousness and modernity of her models with a feminine eye - these works were very warmly received in Paris and beyond with the critic and historian Raymond Escholier being especially fulsome in his praise during her lifetime.

"Nude in blue interior"

She remained faithful, through the evolution of her technique, to the essential tendencies of her temperament. Her way of seeing and of treating the bodies and the flesh indicates a love of pure lines, the gift of showing the nude by it's roundness and flexibility, to translate the delicacy and elasticity of the muscles and features. She concentrates with clarity of vision on the body under the flesh, trembling, thinking, suffering in it's own way. The heart and substance of her work is in the fold of the dumb mouth and the half closed eyes that seem to glance into the future.

"Nu au pendentif bleu hui"

The art critic Marius Ary Leblond hailed Rockline as "a sister of the great Venetians and of our own Renoir, a great lyrical talent." Leblond went on to state in a memorial preface at the Salon d'Automne in 1934, that the artist's premature death that year was "one of the most painful losses to the Parisian art scene in recent years." Her short but intense career left a small but significant volume of work, and it is to these canvasses that we must now look. Details of her life are almost nonexistent, the motivations behind her work in her own words now lost, the custodians of her legacy, if there are any, unknown. Rockline died on the 4th April 1934 and is buried in La cimetiere de Recey-sur-Ource on the Cote d'Or.

"Sailor"

Rockline's work for a time was largely forgotten. By the year 2000 she had begun to find her place amongst the artists of the inter-war period in Montparnasse and she appeared in a group exhibition of female painters in Paris called "Elles de Montparnasse." Her works sold in the $2-5,000 range. Then, in 2008, one of her grandest early cubist compositions "The Card Players" sold at Sothebys, London for £2, 057 250 - eight times its estimate.

"Portrait of Rose Laroque Granoff"

This unheralded, footnote-of-a-footnote painter, whose profile had been close to nonexistent, had out of nowhere (but likely with help from a Russian oligarch of some description) arrived on the map, smashing records and outstripping significant oil paintings by Pissarro, Renoir, Cezanne, Miro, Matisse, Lautrec, Gauguin, Chagall and Bonnard which were offered at the same Impressionist and Modern art sale.

"Portrait"

The result put her in the top bracket for Russian artists at auction, and her name started to appear in art bulletins and market analysis sites. Her profile raised, portraits and nudes by Rockline now often sell for $50,000 and more. Once scarce to the market, her works appear regularly at auction in the wake of the string of healthy prices achieved in the past year. Whether there will be any attempt to organise a retrospective of her beautiful and evocative works now that her name is somewhat better known, and her reputation kick-started, still remains to be seen. One of her nude portraits goes on sale on the 22nd April with an estimate of $50-70,000.

Rockline in 1932, at the age of 36.