Vera Rockline

Vera Rockline was born Vera Nikolaievna Schlesinger in 1896 in Moscow, in the Russian Empire, to a French mother and a Russian father. She trained in painting in Moscow with Ilya Mashkov, a leading figure of the Russian avant-garde, and in 1918 became an apprentice in the Kiev studio of Alexandra Exter, the Cubist and Constructivist painter and influential teacher. In 1919 she exhibited under her birth name in an exhibition of Jewish painting and sculpture organized by the Union of Russian Painters in Moscow.

She moved to Paris in the early 1920s and began exhibiting there under the name Vera Rockline. By 1922 she was showing at the Salon d'Automne, the Salon des Independants, and the Salon des Tuileries, drawing favorable notice from contemporary critics; her first solo exhibition followed at Galerie Charles Vildrac in 1925. Through the rest of the 1920s and into the early 1930s she continued to show in Paris, at galleries including Bernheim, Le Studio, and Barreiro, and her style moved between a Cubist-inflected structure and a warmer, Post-Impressionist treatment of the figure, most visibly in an extended series of nudes.

Rockline died on 4 April 1934 in Paris, by her own hand, from an overdose of the sedative Veronal, at the age of 37 or 38; the exact circumstances were not fully explained in contemporary accounts. Her death was treated by the Paris art world as a significant loss: a memorial preface presented that year at the Salon d'Automne described it, per Christie's lot notes, as a major loss for the Paris art scene, and other contemporary commentary called her premature death one of the greatest losses to the Parisian art scene of those years. A memorial retrospective of her work was mounted at Galerie Barreiro that November. Further retrospectives followed at Galerie Jean Battais in 1975 and at Galerie Drouart in 1984.

Rockline drew serious critical attention during her lifetime and at her death. Christie's lot notes cite a memorial preface presented at the 1934 Salon d'Automne that described her death as a major loss for the Paris art scene, and other contemporary commentary called it one of the greatest losses to the Parisian art scene of those years. The consistent thread across the surviving critical record is recognition of a Cubist-trained hand working within a warmer, figurative, Post-Impressionist language, most fully realized in her nudes and in complex multi-figure compositions such as The Card Players.

Rockline's best-documented auction result is The Card Players (Les Joueurs de Cartes), a 1919 Cubist-figurative canvas that, according to Wikipedia, sold at Christie's in London in June 2008 for about GBP 2,000,000. Christie's own lot notes confirm the work's identity and its Cubist significance, but published summaries of that lot differ on the exact sale date and price, so the precise hammer and premium figures and the exact day of sale should be treated as reported rather than independently confirmed.

Outside that single result, her market is thin and modest. Auction and estimate data point to results in the low tens of thousands to low hundreds of thousands of dollars: Nu a la toilette (1934) sold for USD 35,100 at Sotheby's in Paris, and her Odalisque carried an estimate of USD 101,300 to 152,000 at a Sotheby's London day sale in March 2024. The gap between the 2008 record and the more typical range of results is a defining feature of her market and a reason to treat any single price as an outlier rather than a trend line.

There is no published catalogue raisonne for Vera Rockline. Cabinet Expertise Drouart in Paris, the successor to Galerie Drouart, has stated since 2017 that it is preparing one, but until it appears, buyers should rely on auction house specialist review and documented exhibition history, including her known appearances at the Salons d'Automne, des Independants, and des Tuileries, and the posthumous retrospectives at Galerie Barreiro (1934), Galerie Jean Battais (1975), and Galerie Drouart (1984). No gallery or estate currently appears to hold formal commercial representation of her work; she surfaces primarily through auction consignment. Her one widely reported record sale, GBP 2,000,000 for The Card Players at Christie's London in 2008, sits well above her typical market and is not independently confirmed at the exact figure or exact date in the sources available, so it should be treated as directional rather than a reliable benchmark for pricing other works.