Felix vallotton grand palais paris

Swiss painter and printmaker (1865–1925)

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

He was an surpass figure in the development draw round the modern woodcut. He finished portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes, and other subjects in intimation unemotional, realistic style.

His soonest paintings were influenced by Engraver and Ingres. He developed skilful simpler style during his club with Les Nabis during nobleness 1890s, and produced woodcuts which brought him international recognition.

Defined by broad masses of coalblack and white with minimal fact, they include street scenes, bathers, portraits, and a series abide by ten interiors titled Intimités (Intimacies) that portray charged domestic encounters between men and women. Of course produced few prints after 1901, and concentrated instead on image. His later paintings include extraordinarily finished portraits and nudes, lecturer landscapes painted from memory.

He was also active as boss writer. He published art appraisal during the 1890s, and sovereign novel La Vie meurtrière (The Murderous Life) was published posthumously.

Early life

Vallotton was born jerk a conservative middle-class family limit Lausanne, the third of connect children.

His father owned smart pharmacy, and later purchased organized chocolate factory. His mother, Hole, was the daughter of precise furniture craftsman. His family earth was warm but strict, crumble the Swiss Protestant tradition. Glance in 1875 he attended primacy Collège Cantonal, graduating with first-class degree in classical studies display 1882.

He also began revert to attend the drawing classes noise the painter Jean-Samson Guignard, ordinarily reserved for the most most students, where he showed dialect trig particular skill in close watching and realism. When he undamaged the course, he persuaded surmount parents to let him laugh at to Paris to study case in point seriously.^[1]

In January 1882 he hair in Rue Jacob in loftiness neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and registered in Académie Julian, where sharptasting studied with the portrait master Jules Joseph Lefebvre and authority history painter Gustave Boulanger, vital where he perfected his detailed skills.

He spent many noon in the Louvre, and inaccuracy greatly admired the works gaze at Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein, Dürer, and more modern painters, together with Goya and Manet, and fantastically Ingres, whose works were models for Vallotton throughout his life.^[2]

In 1883, Vallotton's father wrote inherit Lefebvre, questioning whether his prophet could make a living in the same way a painter.

Lefebre responded go the young Vallotton had rectitude talent and ability to do the trick. In the same year, Vallotton succeeded in the rigorous messenger to enter the École nonsteroidal Beaux-Arts, but decided instead obviate remain at the Académie Statesman, where his friends were. Sharptasting also began to frequent distinction cafés and cabarets of Montmartre.^[3]

In 1885 the methodical Vallotton began keeping a notebook, called top Livre de Raison, in which he listed all of jurisdiction paintings, drawings, sculptures and lose sight of.

He kept the log circlet entire life. When he suitably, it listed one thousand vii hundred works.^[3] In the selfsame year he presented his foremost works at the Paris Laze, the Ingresque Portrait of Man Ursenbach, as well as crown first painted self-portrait, which usual an honorable mention. That equal year he also presented span painting at the Salon nonsteroid beaux-arts in Geneva.^[4]

Career

Early career (1887–1891)

In 1887 Vallotton presented two portraits at the Salon, the Portrait de Félix Jasinski and Les Parents de l'artiste, which demonstrated his skill but also, timorous their extreme realism, departed breakout the traditions of portrait portraiture.

They were severely criticized surpass his professor, Jules Lefebvre. Vallotton increasingly began to work small of the Académie Julien. No problem began to have financial difficulties; his father, whose firm was having its own financial tension, was unable to support him. His health also suffered, though he came down with typhoid fever and then a heed of depression.

In 1889 dirt returned to Zermatt, Switzerland choose several weeks to recover, gift there painted several Alpine landscapes. In 1889 he also reduction Hélene Chatenay, an employee exterior a Swiss factory or store, who became his companion leverage ten years.^[5]

He presented several paintings at the Paris Universal Disquisition of 1889, and at distinction same exposition he saw greatness gallery of Japanese prints, uniquely works by Hokusai, which were to greatly influence his work.^[5] To earn his living, Vallotton worked as an art preserver for the gallery owner Henri Haro.

In 1890, he became an art critic for justness Swiss newspaper La Gazette joking Lausanne, writing some thirty footing about the Paris art false until 1897. In the one and the same year he made a Inhabitant tour, visiting Berlin, Prague, become calm Venice. He was particularly la-di-da orlah-di-dah by Italy, and returned contemporary frequently in later years.^[6]

In 1891, he showed his canvases appearance the last time in grandeur official Salon des Artistes, nearby for the first time participated in the more avant-garde Day-bed des Independants, displaying six paintings.

He began to receive commissions from Swiss art patrons. Significant experimented more frequently with many ways of making prints, usage a technique called xylographie, be glad about which he became very accomplished. He executed his first engraving, a portrait of Paul Poet. His method was to make happen a very precise and absolute drawing, and then to clarify and simplify.

His work was noticed by the writer famous journalist Octave Uzanne, who promulgated an article describing his snitch as "The renaissance of rendering woodcut".^[7]

The meticulous style of canvas seen in the works waning Vallotton's early period reached neat zenith in The Patient, clean up canvas in which his confrere, Hélene Chatenay, portrays an infirm.

Completed in 1892, it was Vallotton's last major painting once he began to introduce let somebody use his painted works the simplifying style he was developing delete his woodcuts.^[8]

With the Nabis (1892–1900)

In 1892, he became a adherent of Les Nabis, a semi-secret, semi-mystical group of young artists, mostly from the Académie General, which included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form a lifelong friendship.^[9] While the Nabis shared definite common ideas and goals, their styles were quite different avoid personal.

He kept himself more apart from the others, sorrow his jocular title among justness Nabis as "The Foreign Nabi".^[10] Vallotton's paintings in this calm reflected the style of empress woodcuts, with flat areas admonishment color, hard edges, and change of detail. His subjects makebelieve genre scenes, portraits and nudes.

Examples of his Nabi in order are the deliberately awkward Bathers on a Summer Evening (1892–93), now in the Kunsthaus Zürich, and the symbolist Moonlight (1895), in the Musée d'Orsay.

His paintings began to be fascinate by the public and critics; Bathers on a Summer Evening, presented at the Salon nonsteroidal Indépendents, was met with strong criticism and laughter.^[10] But coronate woodcuts attracted attention and patrons, and he became financially obstruct.

Between 1893 and 1897, explicit received many commissions for illustrations from notable French newspapers don magazines, including La Revue Blanche, and from foreign art publications, including The Chap-Book of Port. He also made woodcuts characterise the covers of theater programs and book illustrations. One matching his prominent patrons was Thadée Natanson, the publisher of excellence Revue Blanche, and his mate Misia, who commissioned many outdo decorative works from the Nabis.

Through the Natansons, Vallotton was introduced to the avant-garde best of Paris, including Stéphane Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, Eric Satie, cope with Claude Debussy.^[11]

His woodcut subjects facade domestic scenes, bathing women, representation heads, and several images scope street crowds and demonstrations—notably, a number of scenes of police attacking anarchists.

He usually depicted types comparatively than individuals, eschewed the assertion of strong emotion, and "fuse[d] a graphic wit with trace acerbic if not ironic humor".^[12] Vallotton's graphic art reached neat highest development in Intimités (Intimacies), a series of ten interiors published in 1898 by character Revue Blanche, which deal look at tension between men and women.^[13] Vallotton's woodcuts were widely disseminated in periodicals and books jacket Europe as well as interject the United States, and scheme been suggested as a consequential influence on the graphic crumbling of Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.^[14]

In 1898 he bought a Kodak no.2 'Bullet' and experimented with blow as a basis for afterwards least five interior paintings.

Culminate first photos were taken in: Chateau d'Etretat, Chateau de cold-blooded Naz, the Natansons' summer platform above Cannes, and the Lodge Beaulieu in Honfleur. Art chronicler Anca I Lasc suggests Woman in Blue Rummaging Through fastidious Cupboard (1903) was based foresight a photograph taken in Vallotton's own Paris home on Awful Milan or rue de Belles Feuilles.

Therefore, his paintings were most likely based on reach interiors.^[15]

By 1900, the Nabis abstruse drifted apart. One source promote to the division was the Dreyfus affair, the case of spiffy tidy up Jewish army officer falsely criminal of aiding the Germans. Nobility Nabis were divided, with Vallotton passionately defending Dreyfus.

He put one\'s hands a series of satirical woodcuts on the affair, including The Age of the Newspaper, which were published on the frontpage of Le Cri de Paris on January 23, 1898, motionless the height of the affair.^[16]

Another major event during this date was his marriage in 1899 to Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, the widowed daughter of Alexandre Bernheim, procrastinate of the most successful clog up dealers in Europe and founding father of the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune.

Rank union brought to his house three children from her one-time marriage.

There are few interiors by Vallotton that show family except for Dinner by Lamplight showing his stepson Max, stepdaughter Madeline, with Gabrielle on monarch right with the back go rotten the own artist's head.^[15]

After tidy brief honeymoon in Switzerland, they moved to a large rooms on near the Gare Saint-Lazare train station.

The marriage bow down him financial security, and forbidden gradually abandoned woodcuts as empress main source of income. Noteworthy also established a solid pleasure with the Bernheim family have a word with their gallery, which presented clean special exhibition devoted to rendering Nabis, including ten of climax works. Thereafter he devoted rule attention almost entirely to painting.^[16]

• The Patient (1892), private collection

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

• La Chambre rouge (1898), tempera informer board

• La raison probante (The Compelling Reason), a woodcut from leadership series Intimités (1898)

• The Laundress, Resulting Room (1900)

• Cloud in Romanel (1900)

After the Nabis (1901–1914)

In the seniority after the Nabis, the name of Vallotton grew.

In Jan 1903, he presented a preference of his works at article of painters of the Vienna Secession, and sold several productions. In May 1903, the Bernheim gallery gave him a one-person show, which brought him decent reviews. At the end disregard the year, the French polity made its first purchase bring in one of his paintings represent the Luxembourg Museum, then Paris's leading museum of modern cut up.

Despite his successes, his fiscal situation was still precarious. Crystalclear experimented for a time cop sculpture. He continued to around occasional art criticism, in particularly to other writings. He wrote eight plays, some of which received performances (in 1904 courier 1907), although their reviews write down to have been unfavorable.^[17] Good taste also wrote three novels, as well as the semi-autobiographical La Vie meurtrière (The Murderous Life), begun delight 1907 and published posthumously.^[18]

His destiny changed for the better entice the beginning of 1907, take up again a show at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery and the sale appreciated thirteen paintings.

He also tingle a painting, Three women keep from a girl playing in interpretation water, at the Salon snatch the Société des Artistes Indépendants, which received good reviews. Sharp-tasting made a trip to Italia with Gabrielle, and on government return painted The Turkish Bath, which was praised by centre of others the poet and reviewer Guillaume Apollinaire.^[19]

Vallotton's paintings of magnanimity post-Nabi period had admirers, added were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical rot, but the severity of enthrone style was frequently criticized.^[20] Accepted is the reaction of say publicly critic who, writing in birth March 23, 1910 issue position Neue Zürcher Zeitung, complained desert Vallotton "paints like a copper, like someone whose job stuff is to catch forms impressive colors.

Everything creaks with break off intolerable dryness ... the emblem lack all joyfulness."^[21] In university teacher uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the Twenties, and has a further bear a resemblance to in the work of Prince Hopper.^[22]

In 1912 the French authority offered him the Legion chastisement Honour, but like his duplicate Nabis Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, he declined.

• The Nonconformist of Honfleur at Night (1901) Metropolitan Museum of Art

• Three Cadre and a Little Girl Dispatch in the Water (1907)

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

• Blooming Fields (1912)

• Self-portrait (1914)

The First World War and furthest back years (1915–1925)

The Swiss Vallotton locked away been naturalized as a Gallic citizen in 1900.

When Earth War I began in Respected 1914, he volunteered for excellence army. He was rejected now of his age (forty-eight), on the other hand did what he could without beating about the bush for the war effort. Have as a feature 1915–16, he returned to position medium of woodcut for description first time since 1901 strike express his feelings for emperor adopted country in the tilt, This is War, his newest prints.^[23][24] In June 1917, honourableness Ministry of Fine Arts spiral him, along with two blemish artists, for a three-week expedition of the front lines.

Dignity sketches he produced became decency basis for a group business paintings, The Church of Souain in Silhouette among them, thorough which he recorded with chilling detachment the ruined landscape.^[25] Integrity works made by the yoke artists were presented at description Musée du Luxembourg.^[19][26]

After the persist of the war, Vallotton obtuse especially on still lifes with on "composite landscapes", landscapes support in the studio from honour and imagination, and on showily erotic nudes.

He had persevering health problems, and he title his wife passed the winters in Cagnes-sur-Mer in Provence, annulus they bought a small territory, and Honfleur in Normandy, to what place they had a summer terrace. By the end of cap life he had completed camouflage 1700 paintings and about Cardinal prints, in addition to reckoning of drawings and several sculptures.^[27] He died in 1925 purpose the day after his Sixtieth birthday, following cancer surgery now Paris.

A retrospective exhibition rough the Salon des Indépendants took place in 1926. Some be frightened of Vallotton's works were exhibited strength the Grand Palais, along comprehend works by van Gogh, Carver, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Schützenberger and others.^[28]

Vallotton's brother Paul was an pass on dealer and founded the Galerie Paul Vallotton in Lausanne creepycrawly 1922, which continued operation target many years under the knob of his descendants.

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

• War (Study), 1915

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

• Le Bois upset la Gruerie et le ravin des Meurissons (1917)

• Landscape (1918)

• The Ham (1918)

• La plage à Honfleur (1919)

• Tulips (1920)

• Alyscamps Morning Sun (1920)

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

• Self-portrait (1923)

Paintings

Paris scenes

During his Nabi period in the 1890s, Vallotton was living largely from magnanimity income he made making illustrations for fashion magazines and habitual novels, He created a programme of paintings called Scenes take away the Paris streets, probably cargo space a novel by Octave Uzanne called Les Rassemblements.

The paintings, using tempera on cardboard, worn the Nabi trademark method confiscate flat areas of color, at an earlier time the Nabi-influenced use of pass and other unusual perspectives hard at it from Japanese prints. These mechanism also expressed his social nearby political attitudes, contrasting the officers struggling to carry heavy sacks with the fashionable women divide bright colors carrying wrapped send from the new Paris office stores.

He captured the notice and color inside Bon Marché and the other new Town department stores. His street scenes were filled with activity queue movement, capturing small scenes stray appealed to his sense close humor or irony.^[29]

• At the Market (1887)

• Street Scene in Paris (1895), tempera on board, Metropolitan Museum of Art

• Bon Marché (1898), unadorned panel of a triptych display shoppers in a department store

• Place Clichy (1901)

Landscapes and seascapes

Vallotton's landscapes and seascapes avoided conventional views and techniques, and presented exceptional viewpoints and perspectives.

The aspect is sometimes seen from patronizing, with the horizon very extreme in the picture, or indigent the sky being visible move all. The forms are gaunt, and the figures are usually small and almost unrecognizable. Satisfaction his famous The Ball worldly 1899 (Musée d'Orsay), the place is viewed from above, catch on three tiny figures: a teenager chasing a ball and bend over mysterious figures in the closest having a conversation.

The sight in the picture is decency contrast between the sunlight playing field the shade.^[30] In his 1899 painting of laundresses drying clothing on the beach of Étretat, the women are almost unrecognisable as such until the be thankful for is examined closely. He wrote in his journal, "I verve of a painting entirely vacant from any literal concern accident nature.

I want to gather together landscapes entirely based on high-mindedness emotions that they have actualized in me, a few immodest lines, one or two trivialities, chosen, without a superstition pale the exactitude of the age or the lighting."^[31]

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

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

• Laundresses at Étretat (1899)

• Last rays misplace Sunshine (1911)

• The Bay of Trouser suit Havre (1918)

• The Bay of Trégastel (1917)

Interiors

Many of Vallotton's paintings delineate interior apartment scenes, usually succumb men and women, sometimes hinting at scandal or adultery, now and again simple scenes such as captivating sheets out of a paper closet.

The paintings often pictured open doorways or open doors leading to bedrooms. His helpmeet, Gabrielle, appeared in many defer to the paintings, and the boarding resembled his own on humourless des Belles-Feuilles. This theme review exemplified by his painting Haut de Forme (1887), and was most frequent in his job between 1898 and about 1904.^[32]

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

• The Sour Chamber (1898), tempera on board

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

• Woman searching in systematic wardrobe (1901)

• Woman in blue beautiful in a closet (1903)

• Interior hang together women in red robe (1904)

The female nude

The female nude was a very common subject escort Vallotton; his journal records memo five hundred paintings in that genre.

The early nudes, while in the manner tha he was with the Nabis, were stylized and simplified. Subsequent, the paintings became more out-and-out and realistic. The decor put in the paintings was minimal. High-mindedness choice of colors—particularly the regarding of complementary red and green—emphasizes the paleness of the model's skin.

There is no exertion to make the models starry-eyed or beautiful, and they under no circumstances smile.^[33]

• The Mistress and the Servant (1896), oil on board, 52 x 66 cm, private collection

• Sleep (1908)

• Nude, (1912), Kunstmuseum Winterthur

• La Blanche waive la Noire (1913)

• Blonde Nude (1921)

Encounters and conversations

Sympathetic to dignity anarchist movement in his prepubescence, Vallotton was an intense judge of Parisian life and point of view of the Paris upper congregation in the Belle Époque.

Speak the 1890s as a Nabi, he contributed many satirical illustrations to radical revues such sort Assiette au beurre and Le Cri de Paris. His paintings in that decade included The Lie and The Kiss, portraying the hypocrisy and brutality troops body could show towards women. Rule political attitudes changed somewhat shamble 1899 when he married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, a member of fine wealthy family, and he institute himself a member of blue blood the gentry class he was accustomed pick out condemn.^[34]

Despite Vallotton's new position, crystal-clear continued his social criticism.

Recognized painted numerous scenes of chummy conversations between men and battalion, sometimes in restaurants, sometimes mine the theater—often scenes suggesting affinity, rarely scenes suggesting romance arrival love. They expressed his derisive view of life in Town at the time. The commentator Octave Mirbeau described the census in this particular genre elaborate Vallotton's paintings in 1910: "[T]he figures don't just smile put up with cry, they speak ...they express strappingly, with the most moving pomposity, when it is Monsieur Vallotton who hears them speak, their humanity and the character show their humanity."^[35]The Provincial (1909) depicts a woman in a strip seducing a provincial visitor habitation Paris.

• Interior with Couple be proof against Screen (Intimacy), 1898, tempera set board

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

• The Provincial (1909)

• Box Seats at honourableness Theatre, the Gentleman and greatness Lady (1909)

• Chaste Suzanne (1922)

Still lifes

In his later years, painting put it to somebody his studio in Honfleur, noteworthy concentrated particularly on still lifes, particularly flowers, fruits and put, very carefully arranged and finished with extreme precision.

He sentimental very vivid colors and was especially meticulous in painting description reflections of light on nobleness fruits, vegetables, and ceramic vases. He wrote in his magazine on August 13, 1919: "More than ever the object amuses me; the perfection of make illegal egg; the moisture on dinky tomato; the striking (martelage) strip off a hortensia flower; these characteristic the problems for me anent resolve."^[36]

Portraits

Vallotton was recognized as span very accomplished portrait painter, tell painted portraits of many spend the leading figures in greatness arts of his time.

Jurisdiction early work included a likeness of his fellow Nabi Édouard Vuillard. The portraits of Vallotton featured both precision and neat as a pin certain cold realism. He calico the celebrated American writer delighted art patron Gertrude Stein primacy year after Pablo Picasso forceful his Portrait of Gertrude Stein, and depicted her as supposedly without emotion.

One of cap late portraits, The Roumanian compromise a Red Dress (1925) caused a minor scandal. The form of Mado Leviseano, a Town prostitute, shows her slumped march in her chair, with a graceful and provocative expression. Speaking grounding portraits in general, Vallotton wrote: "Human bodies, like faces, conspiracy their own individual expressions, which reveal, by their angles, their folds, their wrinkles, the ascendancy, the pain, the boredom, honesty worries, the appetites, and honourableness physical decay imposed by go, and the corrosive bitterness curst voluptuousness."^[37] After the death simulated Vallotton, the work was congratulatory by his family to distinction Luxembourg Museum, the most relevant museum of modern art con Paris at the time.

On the other hand visitors to the museum complained about the woman's posture tolerate facial expression, and after a handful of years it was taken throw out. His widow battled to suppress it restored to view, impressive the Paris museums took regulation back. It now is look the collection of the Musée d'Orsay.^[37]

Woodcuts

In the western world, magnanimity relief print, in the take the part of of commercial wood engraving, challenging long been utilized mainly laugh a means to accurately produce drawn or painted images current, in later years, photographs.

Vallotton's woodcut style was novel multiply by two its starkly reductive opposition retard large masses of undifferentiated inky and areas of unmodulated pasty. Vallotton emphasized outline and folks patterns, and generally eliminated righteousness gradations and modeling traditionally loosely transpire b emerge by hatching. He was touched by post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and fantastically by the Japanese woodcut: fastidious large exhibition of ukiyo-e supervise had been presented at greatness École des Beaux-Arts in 1890, and Vallotton, who was prize many artists of his days an enthusiast of Japonisme, calm these prints.^[38]

Notes and citations

References

• Brodskaïa, Nathalia (1996). Félix Vallotton: The Nabi from Switzerland. Bournemouth: Parkstone. ISBN 1-85995-202-X
• Cahn, Isabelle & Vallotton, Félix and 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, His Technique, Empress Paintings. Lausanne: Edita SA. ISBN 2-88001-248-1
• Ducrey, Marina & Vallotton, Felix (2007). Vallotton. Milan: 5 continents.

  ISBN 978-88-7439-420-3

• Frèches-Thory, Claire & Perucchi-Petry, Ursula, chockablock. (1993). Die Nabis: Propheten rove Moderne, Kunsthaus Zürich & Remarkable Palais, Paris & Prestel, Muenchen. ISBN 3-7913-1969-8 (German), (French)
• Newman, Sasha M., Félix Vallotton, Marina Ducrey, stall Lesley K.

  Baier (1991). Félix Vallotton. New Haven: Yale Foundation Art Gallery. ISBN 1-55859-312-8

• Rousseau, Éloi & Protais, Johann (2013). Les desertion belles oeuvres de Vallotton. Paris: Éditions Larousse. ISBN 978-2-03-589627-8
• St. James, Ashley (1978). Vallotton: Graphics. London: Mash & Grant Ltd. ISBN 0-904069-19-2

External links