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Ker Xavier Roussel (1867-1944) Seated Nude Seen from the Back (c.1912) charcoal and chalk on paper signed with initials 'KXR' lower left h:20.60  w:22 cm. Provenance: Neffe-Degandt Fine Art, London (label verso); Jill Newhouse, New York (label verso); Private Collection In this sensitive chalk and charcoal sketch of a seated nude, Roussel shows the knowledge of anatomy he had learned at the École des Beaux-Arts, and also from life-drawing classes at the Academie Julian. The woman is seen from the back, legs drawn up. The curvature of her spine is the focus of Roussel's drawing; her face is in shadow. This relaxed, informal drawing was in fact a study for a 1908 painting by Roussel, Venus and Love at the Seaside, now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris. The painting depicts a nude woman on a beach near Saint-Tropez. She is seated beside Cupid, who holds a blackbird. A painter associated with Les Nabis, from his teenage years Francois Xavier Roussel was a close friend of Édouard Vuillard, whose sister Marie he married. In 1888, Roussel enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and also studied at the Académie Julian. Eleven years later, he, along with Pierre Bonnard and Vuillard, travelled to Italy; he later settled in Yvelines, where he painted mythological and classical subjects in a broadly Post-Impressionist style. During WWI, Roussel suffered from clinical depression, but in the years following created large-scale murals, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva and other public buildings. An exhibition of his work was held in 2019 at Giverny. Peter Murray, March 2023