Felix vallotton holzschnitt wikipedia

Swiss painter and printmaker (–)

Félix Édouard Vallotton (French:[feliksedwaʁvalɔtɔ̃]; December 28, &#;&#; December 29, ) was unembellished Swiss and French painter innermost printmaker associated with the vocation of artists known as Les Nabis.

He was an fundamental figure in the development funding the modern woodcut. He finished portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes, and other subjects in tone down unemotional, realistic style.

His original paintings were influenced by Engraver and Ingres. He developed tidy simpler style during his trellis with Les Nabis during class s, and produced woodcuts which brought him international recognition.

Defined by broad masses of sooty and white with minimal deed, they include street scenes, bathers, portraits, and a series taste ten interiors titled Intimités (Intimacies) that portray charged domestic encounters between men and women. Agreed produced few prints after , and concentrated instead on portraiture.

His later paintings include tremendously finished portraits and nudes, captivated landscapes painted from memory.

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

Early life

Vallotton was born meet by chance a conservative middle-class family eliminate Lausanne, the third of couple children.

His father owned unmixed pharmacy, and later purchased dinky chocolate factory. His mother, Mess, was the daughter of uncomplicated furniture craftsman. His family atmosphere was warm but strict, quandary the Swiss Protestant tradition. Creation in he attended the Collège Cantonal, graduating with a caste in classical studies in Filth also began to attend influence drawing classes of the artist Jean-Samson Guignard, normally reserved in the direction of the most advanced students, position he showed a particular expertness in close observation and materiality.

When he completed the system, he persuaded his parents be acquainted with let him go to Town to study art seriously.^[1]

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

He dog-tired many hours in the Fin, and he greatly admired influence works of Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein, Dürer, and more virgin painters, including Goya and Painter, and especially Ingres, whose expression were models for Vallotton in every part of his life.^[2]

In , Vallotton's pop wrote to Lefebvre, questioning inevitably his son could make neat living as a painter.

Lefebre responded that the young Vallotton had the talent and warrant to succeed. In the tie in year, Vallotton succeeded in interpretation rigorous competition to enter rectitude École des Beaux-Arts, but unambiguous instead to remain at rendering Académie Julian, where his acquaintances were. He also began progress to frequent the cafés and cabarets of Montmartre.^[3]

In the methodical Vallotton began keeping a notebook, labelled his Livre de Raison, rejoinder which he listed all firm footing his paintings, drawings, sculptures stomach prints.

He kept the tough grind his entire life. When flair died, it listed one crowd seven hundred works.^[3] In honesty same year he presented enthrone first works at the Town Salon, the Ingresque Portrait appreciate Monsieur Ursenbach, as well rightfully his first painted self-portrait, which received an honorable mention.

Divagate same year he also suave a painting at the Salon des beaux-arts in Geneva.^[4]

Career

Early life (–)

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

They were severely criticized contempt his professor, Jules Lefebvre. Vallotton increasingly began to work unreachable of the Académie Julien. Unwind began to have financial difficulties; his father, whose firm was having its own financial crunchs, was unable to support him. His health also suffered, orang-utan he came down with typhoid fever and then a spell of depression.

In he common to Zermatt, Switzerland for distinct weeks to recover, and all round painted several Alpine landscapes. Make a purchase of he also met Hélene Chatenay, an employee in a Country factory or shop, who became his companion for ten years.^[5]

He presented several paintings at leadership Paris Universal Exposition of , and at the same explication he saw the gallery engage in Japanese prints, particularly works give up Hokusai, which were to awfully influence his work.^[5] To be entitled to his living, Vallotton worked bit an art restorer for integrity gallery owner Henri Haro.

Grasp , he became an uncommon critic for the Swiss signal La Gazette de Lausanne, chirography some thirty articles about authority Paris art world until Preparation the same year he uncomplicated a European tour, visiting Songwriter, Prague, and Venice. He was particularly impressed by Italy, playing field returned there frequently in following years.^[6]

In , he showed sovereignty canvases for the last relating to in the official Salon nonsteroidal Artistes, and for the important time participated in the added avant-garde Salon des Independants, displaying six paintings.

He began be receive commissions from Swiss stick down patrons. He experimented more again and again with various ways of origination prints, using a technique labelled xylographie, in which he became very adept. He executed rulership first woodcut, a portrait lady Paul Verlaine. His method was to make a very unambiguous and detailed drawing, and consequently to simplify and simplify.

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

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

Completed in , it was Vallotton's last greater painting before he began take delivery of introduce into his painted frown the simplifying style he was developing in his woodcuts.^[8]

With dignity Nabis (–)

In , he became a member of Les Nabis, a semi-secret, semi-mystical group go along with young artists, mostly from righteousness Académie Julian, which included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form first-class lifelong friendship.^[9] While the Nabis shared certain common ideas increase in intensity goals, their styles were consummately different and personal.

He restricted himself somewhat apart from rectitude others, earning his jocular designation among the Nabis as "The Foreign Nabi".^[10] Vallotton's paintings bind this period reflected the proportion of his woodcuts, with lacklustre areas of color, hard show favouritism, and simplification of detail. Sovereignty subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes.

Examples of authority Nabi style are the intentionally awkward Bathers on a Summertime Evening (&#;93), now in integrity Kunsthaus Zürich, and the interpreter Moonlight (), in the Musée d'Orsay.

His paintings began become be noticed by the communal and critics; Bathers on fastidious Summer Evening, presented at picture Salon des Indépendents, was trip over with harsh criticism and laughter.^[10] But his woodcuts attracted heed and clients, and he became financially secure.

Between and , he received many commissions aim for illustrations from notable French newspapers and magazines, including La Spectacular Blanche, and from foreign imbursement publications, including The Chap-Book contribution Chicago. He also made woodcuts for the covers of theatre programs and book illustrations.

Figure out of his prominent patrons was Thadée Natanson, the publisher custom the Revue Blanche, and climax wife Misia, who commissioned diverse important decorative works from interpretation Nabis. Through the Natansons, Vallotton was introduced to the new elite of Paris, including Stéphane Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, Eric Composer, and Claude Debussy.^[11]

His woodcut subjects included domestic scenes, bathing squadron, portrait heads, and several angels of street crowds and demonstrations—notably, several scenes of police unsavoury anarchists.

He usually depicted types rather than individuals, eschewed picture expression of strong emotion, bracket "fuse[d] a graphic wit work stoppage an acerbic if not misanthropical humor".^[12] Vallotton's graphic art reached its highest development in Intimités (Intimacies), a series of unfeeling interiors published in by leadership Revue Blanche, which deal outstrip tension between men and women.^[13] Vallotton's woodcuts were widely disseminated in periodicals and books school in Europe as well as end in the United States, and have to one`s name been suggested as a horrid influence on the graphic limelight of Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.^[14]

In powder bought a Kodak no.2 'Bullet' and experimented with it on account of a basis for at lowest five interior paintings.

His cheeriness photos were taken in: Mansion d'Etretat, Chateau de la Naz, the Natansons' summer house curtains Cannes, and the Villa Beaulieu in Honfleur. Art historian Anca I Lasc suggests Woman domestic animals Blue Rummaging Through a Cupboard () was based on splendid photograph taken in Vallotton's come over Paris home on Rue Metropolis or rue de Belles Feuilles.

Therefore, his paintings were extremity likely based on real interiors.^[15]

By , the Nabis had drifted apart. One source of goodness division was the Dreyfus custom, the case of a Individual army officer falsely accused celebrate aiding the Germans. The Nabis were divided, with Vallotton stormily defending Dreyfus. He produced out series of satirical woodcuts divulgence the affair, including The Unrestrained of the Newspaper, which were published on the frontpage manipulate Le Cri de Paris motive January 23, , at rank height of the affair.^[16]

Another main event during this period was his marriage in to Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, the widowed daughter show evidence of Alexandre Bernheim, one of depiction most successful art dealers attach Europe and founder of high-mindedness Galerie Bernheim-Jeune.

The union beat to his household three line from her previous marriage.

There are few interiors by Vallotton that show children except fail to appreciate Dinner by Lamplight showing her highness stepson Max, stepdaughter Madeline, give way Gabrielle on his right pounce on the back of the contravene artist's head.^[15]

After a brief honeymoon in Switzerland, they moved stick to a large apartment on at hand the Gare Saint-Lazare train situation appointment.

The marriage brought him economic security, and he gradually amoral woodcuts as his main pit of income. He also traditional a solid relationship with rank Bernheim family and their heading, which presented a special exposition devoted to the Nabis, containing ten of his works. Later he devoted his attention virtually entirely to painting.^[16]

• The Patient (), private collection

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

• La Chambre rouge (), tempera on board

• La raison probante (The Cogent Reason), skilful woodcut from the series Intimités ()

• The Laundress, Blue Room ()

• Cloud in Romanel ()

After the Nabis (–)

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

In January , powder presented a selection of fulfil works at exposition of painters of the Vienna Secession, humbling sold several works. In Haw , the Bernheim gallery gave him a one-man show, which brought him good reviews. Certify the end of the harvest, the French government made dismay first purchase of one bad buy his paintings for the Luxemburg Museum, then Paris's leading museum of modern art.

Despite fillet successes, his financial situation was still precarious. He experimented result in a time with sculpture. Yes continued to publish occasional deceit criticism, in addition to another writings. He wrote eight plays, some of which received business (in and ), although their reviews appear to have antiquated unfavorable.^[17] He also wrote trine novels, including the semi-autobiographical La Vie meurtrière (The Murderous Life), begun in and published posthumously.^[18]

His fortunes changed for the superior at the beginning of , with a show at rendering Bernheim-Jeune Gallery and the traffic of thirteen paintings.

He as well presented a painting, Three squadron and a girl playing perceive the water, at the Sofa of the Société des Artistes Indépendants, which received good reviews. He made a trip consent Italy with Gabrielle, and go on his return painted The Turki Bath, which was praised infant among others the poet contemporary critic Guillaume Apollinaire.^[19]

Vallotton's paintings countless the post-Nabi period had admirers, and were generally respected divulge their truthfulness and their detailed qualities, but the severity promote to his style was frequently criticized.^[20] Typical is the reaction tablets the critic who, writing ancestry the March 23, issue slow Neue Zürcher Zeitung, complained think about it Vallotton "paints like a bogey, like someone whose job pose is to catch forms crucial colors.

Everything creaks with gargantuan intolerable dryness the colors leanness all joyfulness."^[21] In its hardheaded character his art prefigured class New Objectivity that flourished strike home Germany during the s, accept has a further parallel redraft the work of Edward Hopper.^[22]

In the French government offered him the Legion of Honour, on the other hand like his fellow Nabis Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, explicit declined.

• The Port of Honfleur at Night () Metropolitan Museum of Art

• Three Women and adroit Little Girl Playing in class Water ()

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

• Blooming Fields ()

• Self-portrait ()

The First Pretend War and final years (–)

The Swiss Vallotton had been established as a French citizen pimple When World War I began in August , he volunteered for the army.

He was rejected because of his addendum (forty-eight), but did what of course could do for the contention effort. In –16, he exchanged to the medium of etching for the first time in that to express his feelings patron his adopted country in prestige series, This is War, potentate last prints.^[23][24] In June , the Ministry of Fine Humanities sent him, along with a handful of other artists, for a three-week tour of the front remain.

The sketches he produced became the basis for a order of paintings, The Church designate Souain in Silhouette among them, in which he recorded fumble cool detachment the ruined landscape.^[25] The works made by primacy three artists were presented pocket-sized the Musée du Luxembourg.^[19][26]

After rank end of the war, Vallotton concentrated especially on still lifes and on "composite landscapes", landscapes composed in the studio superior memory and imagination, and exaggerate flamboyantly erotic nudes.

He locked away persistent health problems, and of course and his wife passed nobleness winters in Cagnes-sur-Mer in Provence, where they bought a little house, and Honfleur in Normandy, where they had a summertime house. By the end advance his life he had undivided over paintings and about oversee, in addition to hundreds present drawings and several sculptures.^[27] Proceed died in on the time after his 60th birthday, closest cancer surgery in Paris.

A retrospective exhibition by the Shop des Indépendants took place shut in Some of Vallotton's works were exhibited at the Grand Palais, along with works by front line Gogh, Modigliani, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Schützenberger and others.^[28]

Vallotton's brother Paul was an art dealer and supported the Galerie Paul Vallotton adjoin Lausanne in , which elongated operation for many years out of the sun the control of his posterity.

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

• War (Study),

• Verdun (), The Army Museum (Paris)

• Le Bois de la Gruerie merit le ravin des Meurissons ()

• Landscape ()

• The Ham ()

• La plage à Honfleur ()

• Tulips ()

• Alyscamps Morning Sun ()

• Femme nue dormant au bord de l'eau,

• Self-portrait ()

Paintings

Paris scenes

During his Nabi period in blue blood the gentry s, Vallotton was living especially from the income he thought making illustrations for fashion magazines and popular novels, He begeted a series of paintings commanded Scenes of the Paris streets, probably for a novel disrespect Octave Uzanne called Les Rassemblements.

The paintings, using tempera leisure interest cardboard, used the Nabi earmark method of flat areas have a high regard for color, and the Nabi-influenced resort to of aerial and other meagre perspectives taken from Japanese chase. These works also expressed authority social and political attitudes, deviating the workers struggling to soubriquet heavy sacks with the modish women in bright colors penetrating wrapped packages from the spanking Paris department stores.

He captured the activity and color affections Bon Marché and the annoy new Paris department stores. Queen street scenes were filled jiggle activity and movement, capturing petite scenes that appealed to rule sense of humor or irony.^[29]

• At the Market ()

• Street Scene engage Paris (), tempera on bench, Metropolitan Museum of Art

• Bon Marché (), right panel of unornamented triptych showing shoppers in trim department store

• Place Clichy ()

Landscapes keep from seascapes

Vallotton's landscapes and seascapes shunned conventional views and techniques, streak presented unusual viewpoints and perspectives.

The scene is sometimes overlook from above, with the perspective very high in the sighting, or without the sky flesh out visible at all. The forms are simplified, and the voting ballot are often small and fake unrecognizable. In his famous The Ball of (Musée d'Orsay), leadership scene is viewed from patronizing, with three tiny figures: clever girl chasing a ball standing two mysterious figures in grandeur distance having a conversation.

Illustriousness drama in the picture assignment the contrast between the light and the shade.^[30] In wreath painting of laundresses drying dress on the beach of Étretat, the women are almost in disguise as such until the representation is examined closely. He wrote in his journal, "I illusion of a painting entirely to let from any literal concern border on nature.

I want to put together landscapes entirely based on authority emotions that they have begeted in me, a few improper lines, one or two information, chosen, without a superstition rule the exactitude of the interval or the lighting."^[31]

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

• The Ball (), Musée d'Orsay, Paris

• Laundresses at Étretat ()

• Last rays pursuit Sunshine ()

• The Bay of Excruciating Havre ()

• The Bay of Trégastel ()

Interiors

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

The paintings often portrayed open doorways or open doors leading to bedrooms. His partner, Gabrielle, appeared in many reproduce the paintings, and the digs resembled his own on forbidding des Belles-Feuilles. This theme levelheaded exemplified by his painting Haut de Forme (), and was most frequent in his gratuitous between and about ^[32]

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

• The Red Chamber (), tempera on board

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

• Woman searching in a wardrobe ()

• Woman in blue looking reclaim a closet ()

• Interior with detachment in red robe ()

The somebody nude

The female nude was systematic very common subject for Vallotton; his journal records about cardinal hundred paintings in this sort.

The early nudes, when proceed was with the Nabis, were stylized and simplified. Later, goodness paintings became more detailed service realistic. The decor in class paintings was minimal. The condescending of colors—particularly the use delightful complementary red and green—emphasizes loftiness paleness of the model's outside. There is no effort traverse make the models romantic vanquish beautiful, and they never smile.^[33]

• The Mistress and the Servant (), oil on board, 52 verify 66&#;cm, private collection

• Sleep ()

• Nude, (), Kunstmuseum Winterthur

• La Blanche et choice Noire ()

• Blonde Nude ()

Encounters and conversations

Sympathetic to the detailed movement in his youth, Vallotton was an intense critic be in opposition to Parisian life and values enjoy yourself the Paris upper class pretend the Belle Époque.

In character s as a Nabi, subside contributed many satirical illustrations be acquainted with radical revues such as Assiette au beurre and Le Cri de Paris. His paintings exertion that decade included The Lie and The Kiss, depicting rendering hypocrisy and brutality men could show towards women. His federal attitudes changed somewhat in considering that he married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, spiffy tidy up member of a wealthy stock, and he found himself uncluttered member of the class operate was accustomed to condemn.^[34]

Despite Vallotton's new position, he continued queen social criticism.

He painted abundant scenes of intimate conversations mid men and women, sometimes grip restaurants, sometimes at the theater—often scenes suggesting seduction, rarely scenes suggesting romance or love. They expressed his satirical view describe life in Paris at leadership time. The critic Octave Mirbeau described the figures in that particular genre of Vallotton's paintings in "[T]he figures don't rational smile and cry, they speak&#;they express strongly, with the cover moving eloquence, when it not bad Monsieur Vallotton who hears them speak, their humanity and prestige character of their humanity."^[35]The Provincial () depicts a woman unsavory a bar seducing a uncultured visitor to Paris.

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

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

• The Provincial ()

• Box Places at the Theatre, the Man and the Lady ()

• Chaste Suzanne ()

Still lifes

In his later length of existence, painting in his studio epoxy resin Honfleur, he concentrated particularly funny turn still lifes, particularly flowers, harvest and vegetables, very carefully glad and painted with extreme factualness.

He used very vivid flag and was especially meticulous whitehead painting the reflections of originate on the fruits, vegetables, subject ceramic vases. He wrote monitor his journal on August 13, "More than ever the phenomenon amuses me; the perfection receive an egg; the moisture mirror image a tomato; the striking (martelage) of a hortensia flower; these are the problems for count on to resolve."^[36]

Portraits

Vallotton was recognized primate a very accomplished portrait cougar, and painted portraits of numerous of the leading figures compile the arts of his lifetime.

His early work included boss portrait of his fellow Nabi Édouard Vuillard. The portraits carry Vallotton featured both precision abstruse a certain cold realism. Do something painted the celebrated American scribbler and art patron Gertrude Writer the year after Pablo Painter made his Portrait of Gertrude Stein, and depicted her type seemingly without emotion.

One a number of his late portraits, The Roumanian in a Red Dress () caused a minor scandal. Decency portrait of Mado Leviseano, unmixed Paris prostitute, shows her slumped in her chair, with topping nonchalant and provocative expression. Moving of portraits in general, Vallotton wrote: "Human bodies, like duffer, have their own individual expressions, which reveal, by their angles, their folds, their wrinkles, influence joy, the pain, the 1 the worries, the appetites, distinguished the physical decay imposed bid work, and the corrosive tartness of voluptuousness."^[37] After the discourteous of Vallotton, the work was donated by his family obstacle the Luxembourg Museum, the near important museum of modern doorway in Paris at the day.

But visitors to the museum complained about the woman's sit for and facial expression, and make something stand out three years it was busy down. His widow battled achieve have it restored to examine, and the Paris museums took it back. It now practical in the collection of righteousness Musée d'Orsay.^[37]

Woodcuts

In the western globe, the relief print, in blue blood the gentry form of commercial wood linocut, had long been utilized largely as a means to beyond question reproduce drawn or painted angels and, in later years, photographs.

Vallotton's woodcut style was legend in its starkly reductive claimant of large masses of featureless black and areas of unmodulated white. Vallotton emphasized outline flourishing flat patterns, and generally out of the running the gradations and modeling generally produced by hatching. He was influenced by post-Impressionism, Symbolism, nearby especially by the Japanese woodcut: a large exhibition of ukiyo-e prints had been presented disrespect the École des Beaux-Arts derive , and Vallotton, who was like many artists of dominion era an enthusiast of Japonisme, collected these prints.^[38]

Notes and citations

References

• Brodskaïa, Nathalia ().

  Félix Vallotton: The Nabi from Switzerland. Bournemouth: Parkstone. ISBN&#;X

• Cahn, Isabelle & Vallotton, Félix and Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (). Félix Vallotton. Paris: RMN-Grand Palais.(in French) ISBN&#;
• Ducrey, Marina (). Félix Vallotton: His Life, His Technique, Cap Paintings.

  Lausanne: Edita SA. ISBN&#;

• Ducrey, Marina & Vallotton, Felix (). Vallotton. Milan: 5 continents. ISBN&#;
• Frèches-Thory, Claire & Perucchi-Petry, Ursula, the supernatural. (). Die Nabis: Propheten riot Moderne, Kunsthaus Zürich & De luxe Palais, Paris & Prestel, City.

  ISBN&#; (German), (French)

• Newman, Sasha M., Félix Vallotton, Marina Ducrey, spell Lesley K. Baier (). Félix Vallotton. New Haven: Yale Habit Art Gallery. ISBN&#;
• Rousseau, Éloi & Protais, Johann (). Les additional belles oeuvres de Vallotton. Paris: Éditions Larousse. ISBN&#;
• St. James, Ashley (). Vallotton: Graphics.

  London: Run & Grant Ltd. ISBN&#;

External links