The Sleeping Diana

Ker-Xavier Roussel was a French painter and printmaker associated with the Nabis movement in late 19th-century Paris. Working primarily in oil, tempera, and lithography, he developed a decorative approach to landscape and domestic interior scenes characterized by soft color harmonies and flattened pictorial space. His compositions, often featuring intimate garden settings and figures in repose, balance Post-Impressionist brushwork with the symbolic restraint favored by his peers. Roussel exhibited regularly in Paris and maintained a studio practice spanning five decades until his death in 1944.