Paul Serusier

Catalogue entry

Paul Sérusier 1864-1927

T00231 Roof-Tops in Paris c.1891

Inscribed 'P.S.' b.l.
Oil on canvas, 15 x 18 (38 x 45.5)
Presented by the Friends of the Tate Gallery 1959
Prov: Sérusier family; through Galerie Stiebel, Paris; with Redfern Gallery, London; Friends of the Tate Gallery
Exh: Gauguin and the Pont-Aven Group, Tate Gallery, January-February 1966 (205) as 'Red Roofs'; Pont-Aven: Gauguin und sein Kreis in der Bretagne, Kunsthaus, Zurich, March-April 1966 (271)

This picture was purchased under the title 'Roof-Tops at Pont-Aven', but the view is typically Parisian. Mark Powell-Jones has pointed out that the same roofs appear in the background of Sérusier's 'Still Life with Two Apples and a Vase of Flowers' (Marcel Guicheteau, Paul Sérusier, Paris 1976, No.44 repr.), a picture which is signed and dated 1891. However, the latter shows the view from further to the right, presumably from a different window. Sérusier seems to have spent the first part of 1891 in Paris, until he left for Brittany in June, and then to have been in Paris again at the end of the year.

Published in:
Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.681

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