In this beautiful pastel from the Nabis period, Roussel depicts a highly characteristic image of his family at leisure in the French countryside. Despite the heavily decorative, almost abstract use of flat colour, the artist picks out the accoutrements of contemporary Parisian fashions in the ladies’ large colourful hats, creating a scene that falls between the bucolic and the modern.

Roussel studied at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris in the 1880s where he met his lifelong friend, artistic partner and future brother-in-law, Edouard Vuillard. Roussel went on to study at the Académie Julian in Paris where he met Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard and Paul Sérusier, and along with Vuillard became part of the artistic group which became known as ‘Les Nabis’ or Prophets. The group were highly influenced by Gauguin and sought to push art beyond the objectivity of Impressionism, to create to imagery that looked beyond visual reality to create a synthesis of colour, form and spiritual feeling.

The Nabis were particularly inspired by Japanese woodcuts and its use of flat, bold areas of colours, which can be seen in 'Le Pique-nique des Roussel à L’Etang-la-Ville'. In this work Roussel also uses the colour and texture of the bare paper as an active ingredient in the work, which gives the artwork a sense of lightness and freedom of design, as well as a rejection of traditional artistic illusionism. Famously Denis announced ‘remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, a female nude or some sort of anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order’ in his original Nabis manifesto and we see these ideals presented in the present work by Roussel.

Roussel’s work originally sold by legendary galleries such as Galerie Vollard and Galerie Bernheim-Jeune and his pastoral scenes are currently the subject of an exhibition at the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny ‘Ker-Xavier Roussel. Private Garden, Dreamed Garden.’ The artist has also had a major international exhibitions at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, The Institute of Arts, Minneapolis and the Haus der Kunst, Munich amongst others and his works are held in public collections across France.