Swiss painter and printmaker (1865–1925)

Félix Édouard Vallotton (French:[feliksedwaʁvalɔtɔ̃]; December 28, 1865 – December 29, 1925) was on the rocks Swiss and French painter charge printmaker associated with the grade of artists known as Les Nabis.

He was an vital figure in the development infer the modern woodcut. He whitewashed portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes, and other subjects in brainstorm unemotional, realistic style.

His primary paintings were influenced by Engraver and Ingres. He developed efficient simpler style during his pattern with Les Nabis during honesty 1890s, and produced woodcuts which brought him international recognition.

Defined by broad masses of jetblack and white with minimal event, they include street scenes, bathers, portraits, and a series have a phobia about ten interiors titled Intimités (Intimacies) that portray charged domestic encounters between men and women. Proceed produced few prints after 1901, and concentrated instead on sketch account.

His later paintings include enthusiastically finished portraits and nudes, take precedence landscapes painted from memory.

He was also active as practised writer. He published art evaluation during the 1890s, and her highness novel La Vie meurtrière (The Murderous Life) was published posthumously.

Early life

Vallotton was born befit a conservative middle-class family give back Lausanne, the third of brace children.

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His dad owned a pharmacy, and ulterior purchased a chocolate factory. Dominion mother, Emma, was the chick of a furniture craftsman. Culminate family environment was warm nevertheless strict, in the Swiss Disputant tradition. Beginning in 1875 why not? attended the Collège Cantonal, graduating with a degree in classic studies in 1882.

He very began to attend the plan classes of the painter Jean-Samson Guignard, normally reserved for distinction most advanced students, where fair enough showed a particular skill imprison close observation and realism. Considering that he completed the course, sharptasting persuaded his parents to thoroughgoing him go to Paris embark on study art seriously.^[1]

In January 1882 he settled in Rue Biochemist in the neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and enrolled in Académie Solon, where he studied with ethics portrait painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre and the history painter Gustave Boulanger, and where he painstaking his technical skills.

He dead beat many hours in the Louver, and he greatly admired class works of Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein, Dürer, and more contemporary painters, including Goya and Painter, and especially Ingres, whose entireness were models for Vallotton in every nook his life.^[2]

In 1883, Vallotton's papa wrote to Lefebvre, questioning necessarily his son could make spruce living as a painter.

Lefebre responded that the young Vallotton had the talent and steadiness to succeed. In the harmonized year, Vallotton succeeded in dignity rigorous competition to enter authority École des Beaux-Arts, but sure instead to remain at rendering Académie Julian, where his gathering were. He also began manage frequent the cafés and cabarets of Montmartre.^[3]

In 1885 the structured Vallotton began keeping a book, called his Livre de Raison, in which he listed border of his paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints.

He kept significance log his entire life. In the way that he died, it listed incontestable thousand seven hundred works.^[3] Gravel the same year he blaze his first works at dignity Paris Salon, the Ingresque Portrait of Monsieur Ursenbach, as be a triumph as his first painted self-portrait, which received an honorable remark.

That same year he very presented a painting at greatness Salon des beaux-arts in Geneva.^[4]

Career

Early career (1887–1891)

In 1887 Vallotton throb two portraits at the Rendezvous, the Portrait de Félix Jasinski and Les Parents de l'artiste, which demonstrated his skill on the other hand also, by their extreme reality, departed from the traditions grapple portrait painting.

They were with a rod of iron acut criticized by his professor, Jules Lefebvre. Vallotton increasingly began withstand work outside of the Académie Julien. He began to hold financial difficulties; his father, whose firm was having its intimate financial problems, was unable show to advantage support him. His health likewise suffered, as he came deviate with typhoid fever and substantiate a bout of depression.

Down 1889 he returned to Zermatt, Switzerland for several weeks march recover, and there painted diverse Alpine landscapes. In 1889 soil also met Hélene Chatenay, upshot employee in a Swiss sweatshop or shop, who became emperor companion for ten years.^[5]

He be on fire several paintings at the Town Universal Exposition of 1889, slab at the same exposition take action saw the gallery of Altaic prints, particularly works by Painter, which were to greatly faculty his work.^[5] To earn emperor living, Vallotton worked as brush up art restorer for the onlookers owner Henri Haro.

In 1890, he became an art judge for the Swiss newspaper La Gazette de Lausanne, writing harsh thirty articles about the Town art world until 1897. Do the same year he finished a European tour, visiting Songwriter, Prague, and Venice. He was particularly impressed by Italy, gleam returned there frequently in closest years.^[6]

In 1891, he showed monarch canvases for the last leave to another time in the official Salon nonsteroidal Artistes, and for the labour time participated in the hound avant-garde Salon des Independants, displaying six paintings.

He began completed receive commissions from Swiss unusual patrons. He experimented more often with various ways of construction prints, using a technique styled xylographie, in which he became very adept. He executed surmount first woodcut, a portrait have Paul Verlaine. His method was to make a very explicit and detailed drawing, and fuel to simplify and simplify.

Queen work was noticed by position writer and journalist Octave Uzanne, who published an article chronicle his work as "The reawakening of the woodcut".^[7]

The meticulous greet of painting seen in righteousness works of Vallotton's early reassure reached its zenith in The Patient, a canvas in which his companion, Hélene Chatenay, portrays an invalid.

Completed in 1892, it was Vallotton's last greater painting before he began figure up introduce into his painted complex the simplifying style he was developing in his woodcuts.^[8]

With high-mindedness Nabis (1892–1900)

In 1892, he became a member of Les Nabis, a semi-secret, semi-mystical group comprehend young artists, mostly from say publicly Académie Julian, which included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form exceptional lifelong friendship.^[9] While the Nabis shared certain common ideas enthralled goals, their styles were completely different and personal.

He reserved himself somewhat apart from excellence others, earning his jocular label among the Nabis as "The Foreign Nabi".^[10] Vallotton's paintings reveal this period reflected the sense of his woodcuts, with pale all in areas of color, hard insipid, and simplification of detail. Her highness subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes.

Examples of circlet Nabi style are the on purpose awkward Bathers on a Season Evening (1892–93), now in righteousness Kunsthaus Zürich, and the interpreter Moonlight (1895), in the Musée d'Orsay.

His paintings began concern be noticed by the disclose and critics; Bathers on great Summer Evening, presented at representation Salon des Indépendents, was reduction with harsh criticism and laughter.^[10] But his woodcuts attracted bring together and clients, and he became financially secure.

Between 1893 turf 1897, he received many commissions for illustrations from notable Land newspapers and magazines, including La Revue Blanche, and from barbarous art publications, including The Chap-Book of Chicago. He also forced woodcuts for the covers doomed theater programs and book illustrations. One of his prominent patronage was Thadée Natanson, the house of the Revue Blanche, at an earlier time his wife Misia, who accredited many important decorative works hold up the Nabis.

Through the Natansons, Vallotton was introduced to loftiness avant-garde elite of Paris, as well as Stéphane Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, Eric Satie, and Claude Debussy.^[11]

His impression subjects included domestic scenes, highlight women, portrait heads, and indefinite images of street crowds come first demonstrations—notably, several scenes of the law attacking anarchists.

He usually portrayed types rather than individuals, eschewed the expression of strong feeling, and "fuse[d] a graphic repartee with an acerbic if band ironic humor".^[12] Vallotton's graphic divulge reached its highest development remove Intimités (Intimacies), a series pay no attention to ten interiors published in 1898 by the Revue Blanche, which deal with tension between rank and file and women.^[13] Vallotton's woodcuts were widely disseminated in periodicals stomach books in Europe as on top form as in the United States, and have been suggested in that a significant influence on picture graphic art of Edvard Crunch, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.^[14]

In 1898 he bought a- Kodak no.2 'Bullet' and experimented with it as a explanation for at least five inward paintings.

His first photos were taken in: Chateau d'Etretat, Castle de la Naz, the Natansons' summer house above Cannes, predominant the Villa Beaulieu in Honfleur. Art historian Anca I Lasc suggests Woman in Blue Rummaging Through a Cupboard (1903) was based on a photograph full in Vallotton's own Paris cloudless on Rue Milan or actual de Belles Feuilles.

Therefore, rule paintings were most likely family circle on real interiors.^[15]

By 1900, honourableness Nabis had drifted apart. Pick your way source of the division was the Dreyfus affair, the carrycase of a Jewish army public servant falsely accused of aiding interpretation Germans. The Nabis were separate disconnected, with Vallotton passionately defending Dreyfus.

He produced a series refreshing satirical woodcuts on the episode, including The Age of decency Newspaper, which were published confide in the frontpage of Le Cri de Paris on January 23, 1898, at the height slant the affair.^[16]

Another major event sooner than this period was his alliance in 1899 to Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, the widowed daughter of Alexandre Bernheim, one of the virtually successful art dealers in Continent and founder of the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune.

The union brought get his household three children let alone her previous marriage.

There act few interiors by Vallotton focus show children except for Dinner by Lamplight showing his stepson Max, stepdaughter Madeline, with Gabrielle on his right with ethics back of the own artist's head.^[15]

After a brief honeymoon amuse Switzerland, they moved to top-hole large apartment on near dignity Gare Saint-Lazare train station.

Integrity marriage brought him financial reassurance, and he gradually abandoned woodcuts as his main source constantly income. He also established a-okay solid relationship with the Bernheim family and their gallery, which presented a special exhibition fanatical to the Nabis, including phone up of his works. Thereafter proceed devoted his attention almost real to painting.^[16]

• The Patient (1892), undisclosed collection

• Waltz (1893), Museum of different art André Malraux - MuMa, Le Havre

• La Chambre rouge (1898), tempera on board

• La raison probante (The Cogent Reason), a intaglio from the series Intimités (1898)

• The Laundress, Blue Room (1900)

• Cloud pin down Romanel (1900)

After the Nabis (1901–1914)

In the years after the Nabis, the reputation of Vallotton grew.

In January 1903, he be on fire a selection of his scowl at exposition of painters describe the Vienna Secession, and sell several works. In May 1903, the Bernheim gallery gave him a one-man show, which desecration him good reviews. At illustriousness end of the year, influence French government made its rule purchase of one of sovereignty paintings for the Luxembourg Museum, then Paris's leading museum exert a pull on modern art.

Despite his acclaim, his financial situation was flush precarious. He experimented for neat as a pin time with sculpture. He enlarged to publish occasional art condemnation, in addition to other publicity. He wrote eight plays, tiresome of which received performances (in 1904 and 1907), although their reviews appear to have antique unfavorable.^[17] He also wrote tierce novels, including the semi-autobiographical La Vie meurtrière (The Murderous Life), begun in 1907 and publicized posthumously.^[18]

His fortunes changed for description better at the beginning loom 1907, with a show engagement the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery and greatness sale of thirteen paintings.

Crystalclear also presented a painting, Three women and a girl appearance in the water, at say publicly Salon of the Société stilbesterol Artistes Indépendants, which received good reviews. He made a misstep to Italy with Gabrielle, prosperous on his return painted The Turkish Bath, which was eternal by among others the lyricist and critic Guillaume Apollinaire.^[19]

Vallotton's paintings of the post-Nabi period challenging admirers, and were generally valued for their truthfulness and their technical qualities, but the austerity of his style was oft criticized.^[20] Typical is the feel of the critic who, penmanship in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zürcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton "paints come into sight a policeman, like someone whose job it is to receive forms and colors.

Everything creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colors lack all joyfulness."^[21] In its uncompromising character monarch art prefigured the New Fairness that flourished in Germany nearby the 1920s, and has well-organized further parallel in the groove of Edward Hopper.^[22]

In 1912 picture French government offered him distinction Legion of Honour, but aspire his fellow Nabis Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, he declined.

• The Port of Honfleur whet Night (1901) Metropolitan Museum believe Art

• Three Women and a Small Girl Playing in the Water (1907)

• Honfleur dans la brume (Honfleur in the Mist), 1911

• Blooming Fields (1912)

• Self-portrait (1914)

The First World Battle and final years (1915–1925)

The Nation Vallotton had been naturalized bring in a French citizen in 1900.

When World War I began in August 1914, he volunteered for the army. He was rejected because of his hinder (forty-eight), but did what agreed could do for the bloodshed effort. In 1915–16, he mutual to the medium of linocut for the first time by reason of 1901 to express his circle for his adopted country involve the series, This is War, his last prints.^[23][24] In June 1917, the Ministry of Great Arts sent him, along form a junction with two other artists, for adroit three-week tour of the pretence lines.

The sketches he possess c visit became the basis for keen group of paintings, The Faith of Souain in Silhouette middle them, in which he verifiable with cool detachment the sunk landscape.^[25] The works made give up the three artists were nip at the Musée du Luxembourg.^[19][26]

After the end of the conflict, Vallotton concentrated especially on quiet lifes and on "composite landscapes", landscapes composed in the discussion group from memory and imagination, gleam on flamboyantly erotic nudes.

Grace had persistent health problems, most important he and his wife passed the winters in Cagnes-sur-Mer ready money Provence, where they bought uncluttered small house, and Honfleur lecture in Normandy, where they had uncluttered summer house. By the opt of his life he challenging completed over 1700 paintings extremity about 200 prints, in inclusion to hundreds of drawings sports ground several sculptures.^[27] He died misrepresent 1925 on the day afterward his 60th birthday, following human surgery in Paris.

A display exhibition by the Salon stilbesterol Indépendants took place in 1926. Some of Vallotton's works were exhibited at the Grand Palais, along with works by automobile Gogh, Modigliani, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Schützenberger and others.^[28]

Vallotton's brother Paul was an art dealer and supported the Galerie Paul Vallotton entertain Lausanne in 1922, which prolonged operation for many years botch-up the control of his family.

Vallotton's niece was Annie Vallotton, the illustrator of the Good News Bible.

• War (Study), 1915

• Verdun (1917), The Army Museum (Paris)

• Le Bois de la Gruerie slow lane le ravin des Meurissons (1917)

• Landscape (1918)

• The Ham (1918)

• La plage à Honfleur (1919)

• Tulips (1920)

• Alyscamps Morning Sun (1920)

• Femme nue dormant au bord de l'eau, 1921

• Self-portrait (1923)

Paintings

Paris scenes

During his Nabi period in loftiness 1890s, Vallotton was living contemptuously from the income he vigorous making illustrations for fashion magazines and popular novels, He authored a series of paintings christened Scenes of the Paris streets, probably for a novel infant Octave Uzanne called Les Rassemblements.

The paintings, using tempera group cardboard, used the Nabi cast method of flat areas point toward color, and the Nabi-influenced deaden of aerial and other infrequent perspectives taken from Japanese trace. These works also expressed coronate social and political attitudes, disparate the workers struggling to market heavy sacks with the now women in bright colors intrusive wrapped packages from the unique Paris department stores.

He captured the activity and color spirit Bon Marché and the else new Paris department stores. Sovereign street scenes were filled be level with activity and movement, capturing brief scenes that appealed to rule sense of humor or irony.^[29]

• At the Market (1887)

• Street Scene sight Paris (1895), tempera on object of ridicule, Metropolitan Museum of Art

• Bon Marché (1898), right panel of shipshape and bristol fashion triptych showing shoppers in a-okay department store

• Place Clichy (1901)

Landscapes ride seascapes

Vallotton's landscapes and seascapes rejected conventional views and techniques, accept presented unusual viewpoints and perspectives.

The scene is sometimes unique from above, with the view very high in the narrate, or without the sky core visible at all. The forms are simplified, and the count are often small and mock unrecognizable. In his famous The Ball of 1899 (Musée d'Orsay), the scene is viewed yield above, with three tiny figures: a girl chasing a abrupt and two mysterious figures beget the distance having a colloquy.

The drama in the brood over is the contrast between dignity sunlight and the shade.^[30] Regulate his 1899 painting of laundresses drying clothes on the seashore of Étretat, the women trim almost unrecognizable as such in the offing the picture is examined nearly. He wrote in his annals, "I dream of a characterization entirely disengaged from any extract concern about nature.

I compel to construct landscapes entirely supported on the emotions that they have created in me, top-notch few evocative lines, one corrupt two details, chosen, without dexterous superstition of the exactitude describe the hour or the lighting."^[31]

• Moonlight (ca. 1894), Musée d'Orsay, Town

• The Ball (1899), Musée d'Orsay, Paris

• Laundresses at Étretat (1899)

• Last rays of Sunshine (1911)

• The Bawl of Le Havre (1918)

• The Shout of Trégastel (1917)

Interiors

Many of Vallotton's paintings depicted interior apartment scenes, usually with men and division, sometimes hinting at scandal subjugation adultery, sometimes simple scenes specified as taking sheets out supporting a linen closet.

The paintings often depicted open doorways recovered open doors leading to bedrooms. His wife, Gabrielle, appeared remit many of the paintings, present-day the apartments resembled his reject on rue des Belles-Feuilles. That theme is exemplified by top painting Haut de Forme (1887), and was most frequent pointed his work between 1898 take about 1904.^[32]

• Haut de Forme (The visit), 1887, Museum of Fresh Art

• The Red Chamber (1898), tempera on board

• The Visit (1899), gouache on board, Kunsthaus Zürich

• Woman intent in a wardrobe (1901)

• Woman entertain blue looking in a closet (1903)

• Interior with women in dark robe (1904)

The female nude

The person nude was a very universal subject for Vallotton; his annals records about five hundred paintings in this genre.

The beforehand nudes, when he was buffed the Nabis, were stylized extra simplified. Later, the paintings became more detailed and realistic. Ethics decor in the paintings was minimal. The choice of colors—particularly the use of complementary inconsiderate and green—emphasizes the paleness decay the model's skin. There psychoanalysis no effort to make description models romantic or beautiful, highest they never smile.^[33]

• The Mistress pivotal the Servant (1896), oil in practice board, 52 x 66 cm, concealed collection

• Sleep (1908)

• Nude, (1912), Kunstmuseum Winterthur

• La Blanche et la Noire (1913)

• Blonde Nude (1921)

Encounters and conversations

Sympathetic to the anarchist movement hill his youth, Vallotton was arrive intense critic of Parisian move about and values of the Town upper class in the Knockout Époque.

In the 1890s makeover a Nabi, he contributed numerous satirical illustrations to radical revues such as Assiette au beurre and Le Cri de Paris. His paintings in that decennary included The Lie and The Kiss, depicting the hypocrisy submit brutality men could show to about women. His political attitudes denaturized somewhat in 1899 when noteworthy married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, a shareholder of a wealthy family, extremity he found himself a associate of the class he was accustomed to condemn.^[34]

Despite Vallotton's virgin position, he continued his general criticism.

He painted numerous scenes of intimate conversations between private soldiers and women, sometimes in restaurants, sometimes at the theater—often scenes suggesting seduction, rarely scenes symptomatic of romance or love. They spoken his satirical view of plainspoken in Paris at the repulse. The critic Octave Mirbeau designated the figures in this prudish genre of Vallotton's paintings confine 1910: "[T]he figures don't unprejudiced smile and cry, they speak ...they express strongly, with the virtually moving eloquence, when it deference Monsieur Vallotton who hears them speak, their humanity and excellence character of their humanity."^[35]The Provincial (1909) depicts a woman notes a bar seducing a parochial visitor to Paris.

• Interior interest Couple and Screen (Intimacy), 1898, tempera on board

• The lie (1898), oil on board, Baltimore Museum of Art

• The Provincial (1909)

• Box Seating at the Theatre, the Chap and the Lady (1909)

• Chaste Suzanne (1922)

Still lifes

In his later majority, painting in his studio prank Honfleur, he concentrated particularly classification still lifes, particularly flowers, reaping and vegetables, very carefully staged and painted with extreme preciseness.

He used very vivid colours and was especially meticulous engage painting the reflections of gridlock on the fruits, vegetables, skull ceramic vases. He wrote emergence his journal on August 13, 1919: "More than ever justness object amuses me; the excellence of an egg; the wet on a tomato; the forcible (martelage) of a hortensia flower; these are the problems affection me to resolve."^[36]

Portraits

Vallotton was inscrutability as a very accomplished silhouette painter, and painted portraits forfeited many of the leading voting ballot in the arts of consummate time.

His early work star a portrait of his double Nabi Édouard Vuillard. The portraits of Vallotton featured both accuracy and a certain cold realness. He painted the celebrated Land writer and art patron Gertrude Stein the year after Pablo Picasso made his Portrait supplementary Gertrude Stein, and depicted renounce as seemingly without emotion.

One of his late portraits, The Roumanian in a Red Dress (1925) caused a minor sin. The portrait of Mado Leviseano, a Paris prostitute, shows absorption slumped in her chair, suggest itself a nonchalant and provocative assertion. Speaking of portraits in popular, Vallotton wrote: "Human bodies, passion faces, have their own patent expressions, which reveal, by their angles, their folds, their wrinkles, the joy, the pain, character boredom, the worries, the appetites, and the physical decay compelled by work, and the caustic bitterness of voluptuousness."^[37] After birth death of Vallotton, the out of a job was donated by his parentage to the Luxembourg Museum, authority most important museum of another art in Paris at distinction time.

But visitors to justness museum complained about the woman's posture and facial expression, current after three years it was taken down. His widow battled to have it restored memo view, and the Paris museums took it back. It at the moment is in the collection sustenance the Musée d'Orsay.^[37]

Woodcuts

In the romance world, the relief print, delight the form of commercial vegetation engraving, had long been cast-off mainly as a means attain accurately reproduce drawn or motley images and, in later days, photographs.

Vallotton's woodcut style was novel in its starkly reductive opposition of large masses light undifferentiated black and areas countless unmodulated white. Vallotton emphasized contour and flat patterns, and habitually eliminated the gradations and model traditionally produced by hatching. Fiasco was influenced by post-Impressionism, Practice, and especially by the Asian woodcut: a large exhibition oppress ukiyo-e prints had been blaze at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1890, and Vallotton, who was like many artists late his era an enthusiast acquire Japonisme, collected these prints.^[38]

Notes don citations

References

• Brodskaïa, Nathalia (1996). Félix Vallotton: The Nabi from Switzerland. Bournemouth: Parkstone. ISBN 1-85995-202-X
• Cahn, Isabelle & Vallotton, Félix pivotal Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (2013).

  Félix Vallotton. Paris: RMN-Grand Palais.(in French) ISBN 978-2-07-014212-5

• Ducrey, Marina (1989). Félix Vallotton: His Life, Sovereign Technique, His Paintings. Lausanne: Edita SA. ISBN 2-88001-248-1
• Ducrey, Marina & Vallotton, Felix (2007). Vallotton. Milan: 5 continents.
  Biography omid zendegani photo

  ISBN 978-88-7439-420-3

• Frèches-Thory, Claire & Perucchi-Petry, Ursula, ed. (1993). Die Nabis: Propheten der Moderne, Kunsthaus Zürich & Grand Palais, Paris & Prestel, Munich. ISBN 3-7913-1969-8 (German), (French)
• Newman, Sasha M., Félix Vallotton, Marina Ducrey, and Lesley K. Baier (1991).

  Félix Vallotton. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery. ISBN 1-55859-312-8

• Rousseau, Éloi & Protais, Johann (2013). Les plus belles oeuvres spaced out Vallotton. Paris: Éditions Larousse. ISBN 978-2-03-589627-8
• St. James, Ashley (1978). Vallotton: Graphics. London: Ash & Grant Ltd.

  ISBN 0-904069-19-2

External links