Victor Roux-champion - Paris By Night; The Apse Of Notre-dame And The Quays - Circa 1900

Victor-Joseph Roux-Champion was a French painter, watercolorist, printmaker, and ceramicist whose work occupies a unique place in the revival of color printmaking in the early 20th century.

After settling in Paris in 1890, he first trained at the Académie Colarossi, then at the Académie Julian under William Bouguereau, before joining Gustave Moreau’s studio at the École des Beaux-Arts. During these formative years, he became friends with Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, and Georges Rouault.

A stay in Pont-Aven in 1896 marked a decisive turning point in his career. Inspired by the legacy of Paul Gauguin, he deepened his practice of printmaking alongside Charles Cottet, experimenting with various media, notably wood and zinc. From that time on, he exhibited regularly at the Salons des Artistes Français and later at the Société nationale des beaux-arts, where he initially presented watercolors before devoting himself to color engraving, though he never abandoned painting. In 1914, he also unveiled a series of ceramics there.

In 1904, he helped found the Société de la gravure originale en couleurs with Jean-François Raffaëlli, contributing to the revival of this technique. A few years later, in Cagnes, he worked alongside Pierre-Auguste Renoir and created several engraved plates with him.

After World War I, Roux-Champion exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon des Artistes Décorateurs, where he presented watercolors and stoneware. Represented by the Albert André Gallery in Paris, he joined the Partisans group in 1924, an artistic and literary cooperative with an internationalist mission that included Albert Decaris, Lucien Pissarro, Maurice Savin, and Kenzō Okada.

Victor-Joseph Roux-Champion’s work is now held in numerous public collections, including the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Louvre Museum, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, and the museums of Quimper, Bruges, Nijmegen, and Warsaw, as well as the National Gallery of Art in Washington