Faubourg des Longues Peines (Impasse)
1929
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View on museum website →Medium
lithograph in black
Classification
Portfolio
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Rosenwald Collection
Accession Number
1944.2.70
Art Historical Context
Georges Rouault's *Faubourg des Long Peines (Impasse, created in 1929, is a striking black lithograph that captures the artist's profound empathy for society's outcasts. The evocative title—"Suburb of Long Sentences ( End)"—hints at a grim urban alleyway, evoking themes of imprisonment, poverty, despair that recur in Rouault's oeuvre. As a leading French Expressionist influenced by Fauvism, Rouault often drew from his Catholic faith and Gothic traditions, using heavy black outlines and distorted forms to convey moral intensity, much like stained-glass windows he once crafted. This monochromat...
About the Artist
Georges Rouault
Georges-Henri Rouault was born on May 27, 1871, in a Paris cellar during the violent "Bloody Week" of the Paris Commune, when a stray shell destroyed his family's home in the working-class Belleville district. Raised by a carpenter father who worked at the Pleyel piano factory and a grandfather who collected prints by Honoré Daumier, Rembrandt, Courbet, and Manet, Rouault showed early artistic pro...