HOMAGE TO SERGE FERAT: Haba & Alban Roussot Collection

Auction on 22 October 2007

26 July 2007

The auction to be held on 22 October 2007 constitutes an unprecedented tribute to Serge Férat (1879-1958) whose work, much influenced by Cubism, is extremely rare on the market. Never have so many works by Férat been presented together.

The Haba & Alban Roussot Collection is dominated by 132 works by Serge Férat – 42 paintings in oil on canvas, 46 gouaches, 40 drawings, 2 paintings on glass, and 2 painted vases - and forms a comprehensive overview of his creative output.

The Collection also includes: 38 works by Léopold Survage – 10 canvases, 4 gouaches and 24 drawings; 10 works by François Angiboult; and 11 works by Irène Lagut. These artists belonged to different avant-garde tendencies and, with Férat, formed a separate family around La Section d’Or in the 1920s.

The overall sale estimate is €1.3m-1.9m.

This collection was originally assembled by Serge Férat himself, and is first and foremost an artist's collection.

Férat, Survage, Angiboult and Lagut were brought together by Guillaume Apollinaire, who was to play a vital rôle in each of their careers. Their works reflect their mutual friendship, and reply to each other to create a revealing dialogue about an era sometimes known as painting's "golden age."

The sale marks the first time such an ensemble of Férat's work - from his early Cubist pictures to his late landscapes, via paintings of the circus and theatre - has been pesented, and includes one of his most important works: Lacerba, oil on canvas c.1913-14 (est. €200-300,000).

Serge Férat took part in the Salon des Artistes Indépendants from 1910-12, and his work was shown at the Galerie Percier (Paris) in 1917 and 1924. He also took part in many other exhibitions including: Thirty Years of Independent Art 1884-1914 at the Grand Palais in 1926; the Cubism Retrospective at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in1935; Paris-Moscow at the Pompidou Centre in 1981; and the 1989 Venice Biennale.

Fifteen of his works were shown at the exhibition Au Temps des Cubistes staged by Anisabelle Berès in Paris in 2006-07, alongside Picasso, Braque, Gris, Gleizes, Metzinger…

Serge Férat's work can be found in the Pompidou Centre, the City of Paris Modern Art Museum, and in various other museums around the world, notably in the United States.

Férat, who died in 1958, bequeathed his collection to Haba Roussot, his companion for over 20 years. Until her death in 2001, Haba devoted all her energy to promoting Serge Férat's work, showing it across Europe and in the United States and Japan.

The collection has remained in the Roussot family until today. Now Haba's son Alban is selling part of the collection, true to his promise to continue Haba's efforts to further recognition of Serge Férat's work.

Paris a-Buzz

Sergei Nikolayevich Jastrebzov (known from 1911 as Serge Férat) was born into a wealthy Russian family and studied at the Kiev art school before moving to Paris in 1902, where he attended Bouguereau's classes at the Académie Julian and studied with Marcel Baschet, rubbing shoulders with the artists of the Paris avant-garde. Along with habitués of Montmartre studios, Férat frequented the Lapin Agile cabaret and became friends with Le Douanier Rousseau, acquiring 14 works from him.

Férat subsequently met Braque, Picasso and Apollinaire, who would all remain close to him for many years. He was one of the first clients of the Cubists, including Braque and Picasso, and built up a fine collection.

After the salon of his cousin Baroness Hélène d’œttingen, Serge Férat's studio at 278 boulevard Raspail - where he also installed the offices of the review Les Soirées de Paris - became a meeting-place for writers, art critics and avant-garde artists, among them Maurice Raynal, Blaise Cendrars, André Salmon, Max Jacob, Fernand Léger, Gleizes, Chagall, Picasso, Modigliani, Sonia Delaunay, Léopold Survage, and Irène Lagut.

The art review Les soirées de Paris

In 1907 Serge Férat met Guillaume Apollinaire. The encounter would prove decisive, and it was Apollinaire who suggested his Frenchified pseudonym Serge Férat.

In 1913, together with Baroness d’œttingen, Férat acquired the magazine Les Soirées de Paris. Apollinaire took charge of the literary side of this prestigious art and literature review, and Férat the arts pages. Les Soirées de Paris became a powerful vector for spreading Cubism across Europe, and was published until World War One.

Serge Férat: A highly personal form of cubism

Soon after arriving in France, Serge Férat was influenced by his discovery of Cézanne then, in 1910, of Cubism embodied by Picasso, Braque and Gris.

It was then that he began producing still lifes blending pure Cubism with the warm colours of Russian folklore.

In 1914 he took part in the Salon des Indépendants with his Lacerba pictures under the name of Edouard Férat. As Apollinaire wrote in L’Intransigeant on 2 March 1914: "And now Edouard Férat… whose début has not gone unnoticed. Compositions with fine colouring that promise major works to come."

The title Lacerba came from an Italian magazine launched by Ardengo Soffici and Giovanni Papini in 1913, partly to promote Italian futurism. The Lacerba masthead would often recur in pictures by Picasso, Soffici, Severini, Carra, Magnelli…

Serge Férat's Lacerba (c.1913-14) is one of his foremost works (est. €200-300,000),
marking an evolution of Cubism as pioneered by Picasso, Braque and Gris, and highly evocative of Férat's style. The painting features the headline LACERBA, reflecting the importance of the Florence-based review in the artistic context of the period. Férat's painting was, in fact, reproduced in the 15 July 1914 issue of Lacerba.

In Still Life (est. €20-30,000), Férat used the oval beloved of the Cubists to achieve poetic expression, with the formal and linear rigour leaving full scope for imagination. The other paintings in the sale treat different aspects of Cubist still lifes (fruit, fish, glasses, tables) in Férat's habitually bright colours. Take Mauve Still Life with Window (oil on hardboard),c.1911-12 (est. €35-45,000); Still Life with Glasses (gouache) from 1918 (est. €18-25,000); Still Life with Fish from 1920 (est. €22-28,000); and Still Life with Table & Fruit Bowl (canvas), c.1920-21 (est. €35-45,000).

Férat was ruined when his estate was confiscated by the Bolsheviks, who sold his important collection of paintings and destroyed many of his works. In 1920 he took part in a group exhibition organized by Léonce Rosenberg. Although Férat was not one of "Rosenberg's painters" contracted to L’Effort Moderne, Rosenberg was fully aware of his talent, and bought four paintings from him (and thirteen works on paper) between December 1918 and April 1921.

Férat showed his work, with that of other Cubists, at the Salon des Indépendants until 1928, and at La Section d’Or in 1925 - whose Europe-wide reputation furthered recognition of his work. Thereafter he gradually distanced himself from the strictures of Cubism, and developed a passion for the circus and parades.

On to the theatre & circus

Férat was responsible for the decor and costumes of the play Les Mamelles de Tirésias by his friend Guillaume Apollinaire, whose one and only performance took place on 24 June 1917. Fifteen illustrations relating to the play,including portrayals of the leading characters (musicians, clowns, riders, Harlequins) in Indian ink, pencil, watercolour and gouache, will be on offer. Estimates vary from €500 to €12,000. Highlights include the gouaches Woman with Violin, c.1919-20 (est. €8000-12,000), and Musician with Drum (est. €6000-8000).

The circus was another colourful source of inspiration for Férat. In 1908 he began renting an annual box at the Cirque Médrano, a favourite meeting-point for Picasso and his "band". This festive world is captured by his 1922 canvas Parade Fantastique (est. €50,000-70,000) and by The Parade in oil on canvas (est. €40-60,000); At the Circus (est. €7000-9000); and Circus - Horses, in gouache on paper (est. €4000-6000).

For the 1937 Exposition Universelle Férat designed sets for Pierre-Albert Birot's Matoum en Matoumoisie staged at the puppet-theatre owned by Roger Roussot, father of Alban Roussot. A dozen set designs, including gouaches (est. €4000-6000) and large-format canvases like Cavalier (est. €25-35,000) and Landscape (est. €20-30,000), will be available.

Landscapes

During the 1930s Serge Férat turned to landscape painting. Henri-Pierre Roché, a collector and subtle critic of the artists of his time, who backed Serge Férat throughout, wrote in his catalogue preface to Férat's Landscapes exhibition of 1934: "Each canvas is a special synthesis, like a fairy tale, a poem, a dream.... To Férat such variety of colour is so great and natural that we do not immediately notice all his boldness and skill."

This skill can be admired in such canvases as Paysage Animé (est. €10-12,000) and Le Retour des Champs (est. €8000-12,000); gouaches like Retour de Pêche (est. €6000-8000); and Village, a pencil drawing (est. €700-900).

Léopold Survage

The Haba & Alban Roussot Collection also features nearly forty works by Survage.

It was thanks to Apollinaire that Léopold Survage (1879-1968) met Serge Férat and Baroness d’Œttingen. Survage became the Baroness's lover, and frequenting her salon enabled him to get to know all the major artists of the period.

In 1917 Survage was honoured, along with Irène Lagut, at the first Les Soirées de Paris exhibition. Apollinaire wrote the catalogue preface, in the form of calligrammes.

Le Port (est. €70-80,000), a wonderful picture, concentrates all Survage's talent, weaving symbolic elements like fishes and leaf into a cut-out composition punctuated by diagonals enclosing sky, sea and harbour dwellings. As in Survage's famous Villes series, silhouetted figures are a recurring leitmotif.

Other important Survage works on offer include a 1914 Still Life with Peaches (est. €40-60,000) and his 1924 Germaine Survage dans la Ville (est. €30-40,000).

François Angiboult & Irène Lagut

The versatile Baroness Hélène d’Œttingen (1887-1950), who had Russian origins like Serge Férat, was at the same time a painter, under the pseudonym François Angiboult; a writer, under the name Roch Grey; and poet, as Léonard Pieux. She cut a witty, mysterious figure as she reigned at her salon over all that was most avant-garde in Paris.

Angiboult's work was shown at the Salon des Indépendants alongside the Cubists in 1912. In 1920, as part of the second Section d’Or group, she blended motifs from Russian folk art with decorative art techniques. Among the ten works by François Angiboult to be offered are La Ville (canvas) from 1948 (est. €5000-7000), and Paysage, in oil and gold paint on canvas (est. €3000-4000).

Irène Lagut, Serge Férat's partner for eight years – and also Picasso's girlfriend – exhibited her pictures with Survage in 1917, under Apollinaire's patronage. She became known for her portraits, including one of the wounded Apollinaire with the inscription Bonjour mon poète, je me souviens de votre voix ("Hello my poet, I recall your voice"), and another showing Cocteau with a carnation.

Eleven works by Irène Lagut will be available, including the gouache/collage set designs produced with Serge Férat for Jean Cocteau's Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel in 1921 (est. €5000-7000); Cocteau à l’œillet (1919), in ink on paper (est. €600-800); and the painting Deux Femmes (est. €2000-3000).

Catalogue by Jeanine Warnod

The sale catalogue has been written by Jeanine Warnod, an art critic and journalist with Le Figaro for 30 years. She was born in Montmartre in 1921, grew up in the company of local artists, and became an emblematic figure in the art world. She is the authoress of Le Bateau-Lavoir and La Ruche et Montparnasse; monographs on Survage, Max Jacob, Suzanne Valadon, and Maurice Utrillo; and L’Ecole de Paris, dans l’intimité de Chagall, Foujita, Pascin, Cendrars, Carco, Mac Orlan, à Montmartre et à Montparnasse (Arcadia Editions 2004).

She has also organized numerous exhibitions in France and Japan, including Le Bateau-Lavoir; La Ruche & Montparnasse; Centenaire de Guillaume Apollinaire; and Léopold Survage. She was curator of the exhibition Voyages au Cœur de l’Ecole de Paris - Le Chemin de Warnod at the Musée de Montparnasse, and is currently working on a book on François Angiboult.

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Sale info

Sale: 1330

Location: Hôtel Dassault

Date: 22 October 2007, 8:30pm

Viewing information

16 to 19 October,
from 10am to 7pm

Hôtel Dassault
7 rond-point des Champs Elysées
75008 Paris

Specialist

Violaine de La Brosse-Ferrand

Phone +33 1 42 99 20 32

Contact

Marie Sanna

Phone +33 1 42 99 20 33

press contact

Armelle Maquin

Phone +33 1 43 14 05 69

Mob. +33 6 11 70 44 74

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