Vatican Museums

Automne ou Nazareth was one of the first works of the 1900s to enter the Vatican collections. Rouault himself donated it for the rooms in the Pinacoteca devoted to the twentieth century, inaugurated in 1960. The painting, also defined as a “biblical landscape”, portrays the adolescent Jesus dressed in white, walking down a path between the houses of Nazareth; the people draw near Him and await Him at the end of the street, while the golden light of sunset illuminates the scene, dominated by dark rust shades with an electric blue sky above. A pupil of Moreau, and initially influenced by the colours used by the Fauves and the research of the Die Brücke group, Rouault produced this work in old age, but it demonstrates his very personal language, with a nervous touch in which forms are defined with marked brushstrokes, typical of his entire career. The Collection includes a rich body of work by the artist, documenting his uninterrupted and profuse commitment to religious painting.