Fontainebleau Fine Art

ROCHE, Odilon French (1868-1947) A Lazy Day in the Sun – Circa 1920

Signed O. Roche lower right

Watercolor on paper – Excellent condition, color retention, no foxing, no molding, no fading

11 x 17 ¾ in                     (28 x 45 cm)

19 ¼ x 26 ½ in   framed   (49 x 67,5 cm)

Beautiful custom-made, handcrafted, gold-leafed Louis XV style frame with archival quality French mat

Odilon Roche studied at the “Ecole des Beaux-Arts” in Paris. However, he began his professional career as a wine taster, travelling throughout Europe attending wine fairs. In 1902, he opened a shop in Montmartre selling artists’ supplies to important clients like Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, and Maurice Denis. In 1905, he opened a second shop selling Persian and Chinese antiques, which soon became a fashionable rendez-vous for cultured Parisians. Among these were the fashion designer Coco Chanel, and the writers Anatole France and Colette, who is said to have described Roche as “un homme fastueux dans une époque mediocre” (a flamboyant man in a mediocre era).

It is not known exactly when Roche resumed his artistic career, but it is likely to have come as a result of the opportunity he received in 1917. That year, his friend Léonce Bénédite, the executor of Auguste Rodin’s will and soon to be the first curator of the Musée Rodin, asked Roche to classify the entire contents of the sculptor’s studio, including countless boxes of loose drawings and watercolors. The artist became the commercial agent of the Musée Rodin.

The decade Roche spent on this immense task totally immersed with Rodin’s distinctive style and technique as a draughtsman was, without a doubt, his best learning experience. As a result, Roche’s own wash drawings and watercolors, especially of female nudes, displayed the profound influence of those of the great sculptor.

Roche also assembled a large number of watercolors by Rodin - totaling almost 160 sheets - for his own collection; most of these were dispersed at auction in 1933.

On his later days, Roche settled on the French Riviera near Toulon where he produced the bulk of his work. Now including coastal scenes and landscapes rendered with a swift and sure brushwork, made after nature, from beach to beach, the artist did not go unnoticed sporting a long white beard and often dressed in an Eastern robe and turban.
Roche does not seem to have ever sold or exhibited his work in his lifetime. His estate having been seriously damaged at the end of World War II during the bombing of Toulon, he died forgotten. It was not until the early 1960’s, some fifteen years after his death, that Roche’s work was rediscovered at the premises of a framer in Saint-Tropez giving rise to an exhaustive search.

In 1962 and 1993, two personnel exhibitions of the artist’s work were held at Châteauneuf-sur-Loire, his birth place.

In 1971, an exhibition of some thirty watercolors was held at a gallery in Saint-Tropez, followed the next year by an auction in Paris of drawings and watercolors from his estate.

This picturesque character certainly deserved this attention, all the more because he created art purely for his own pleasure without thinking of gaining glory or profit from it.

 This watercolor epitomizes the artist’s work both in depicting his favorite subject matter of laid-back and care-free sunbathers with an emphasis on movement and in showcasing the seemingly effortless watercolorist’s style.

• Literature:

- Gerald Schurr: Dictionnaire des Petits Maîtres de la Peinture, Paris 1996

- Benezit: Dictionnaire des Peintres, 1999     

- Hislop, Duncan: The Art Sales Index, 2005