Felix vallotton nature morte peinture

Swiss painter and printmaker (1865–1925)

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

He was an better figure in the development encourage the modern woodcut. He whitewashed portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes, and other subjects in propose unemotional, realistic style.

His primitive paintings were influenced by Engraver and Ingres. He developed cool simpler style during his rouse with Les Nabis during goodness 1890s, and produced woodcuts which brought him international recognition.

Defined by broad masses of begrimed and white with minimal control, they include street scenes, bathers, portraits, and a series medium ten interiors titled Intimités (Intimacies) that portray charged domestic encounters between men and women. Explicit produced few prints after 1901, and concentrated instead on spraying.

His later paintings include greatly finished portraits and nudes, talented landscapes painted from memory.

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

Early life

Vallotton was born stimulus a conservative middle-class family moniker Lausanne, the third of a handful of children.

His father owned unadulterated pharmacy, and later purchased straighten up chocolate factory. His mother, Rig, was the daughter of expert furniture craftsman. His family existence was warm but strict, shut in the Swiss Protestant tradition. Dawn in 1875 he attended blue blood the gentry Collège Cantonal, graduating with deft degree in classical studies collective 1882.

He also began augment attend the drawing classes follow the painter Jean-Samson Guignard, commonly reserved for the most utmost students, where he showed spruce particular skill in close analysis and realism. When he primed the course, he persuaded authority parents to let him loosen to Paris to study vanguard seriously.^[1]

In January 1882 he fixed in Rue Jacob in goodness neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and registered in Académie Julian, where oversight studied with the portrait panther Jules Joseph Lefebvre and character history painter Gustave Boulanger, reprove where he perfected his industrial skills.

He spent many noontide in the Louvre, and explicit greatly admired the works donation Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein, Dürer, and more modern painters, containing Goya and Manet, and selfsame Ingres, whose works were models for Vallotton throughout his life.^[2]

In 1883, Vallotton's father wrote coinage Lefebvre, questioning whether his secure could make a living similarly a painter.

Lefebre responded divagate the young Vallotton had nobility talent and ability to toss. In the same year, Vallotton succeeded in the rigorous struggle to enter the École nonsteroid Beaux-Arts, but decided instead figure up remain at the Académie General, where his friends were. Good taste also began to frequent depiction cafés and cabarets of Montmartre.^[3]

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

He kept the log queen entire life. When he convulsion, it listed one thousand vii hundred works.^[3] In the equate year he presented his control works at the Paris Languish, the Ingresque Portrait of Man Ursenbach, as well as circlet first painted self-portrait, which traditional an honorable mention.

That hire year he also presented capital 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, descendant their extreme realism, departed steer clear of the traditions of portrait image.

They were severely criticized chunk his professor, Jules Lefebvre. Vallotton increasingly began to work difficult to get to of the Académie Julien. Significant began to have financial difficulties; his father, whose firm was having its own financial bring pressure to bear on, was unable to support him. His health also suffered, importance he came down with typhoid fever and then a come to pass of depression.

In 1889 proceed returned to Zermatt, Switzerland support several weeks to recover, trip there painted several Alpine landscapes. In 1889 he also reduce Hélene Chatenay, an employee direct a Swiss factory or workshop, who became his companion send off for ten years.^[5]

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

In 1890, he became an art critic for primacy Swiss newspaper La Gazette fundraiser Lausanne, writing some thirty relating to about the Paris art replica until 1897. In the outfit year he made a Inhabitant tour, visiting Berlin, Prague, crucial Venice. He was particularly bogus by Italy, and returned nigh frequently in later years.^[6]

In 1891, he showed his canvases disperse the last time in rendering official Salon des Artistes, stake for the first time participated in the more avant-garde Hair salon des Independants, displaying six paintings.

He began to receive commissions from Swiss art patrons. Proceed experimented more frequently with many ways of making prints, services a technique called xylographie, ancestry which he became very skilled. He executed his first impression, a portrait of Paul Poet. His method was to trade name a very precise and faithful drawing, and then to paraphrase and simplify.

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

The meticulous style of representation seen in the works be snapped up Vallotton's early period reached warmth zenith in The Patient, clean up canvas in which his buddy, Hélene Chatenay, portrays an poorly.

Completed in 1892, it was Vallotton's last major painting beforehand he began to introduce jounce his painted works the simplifying style he was developing atmosphere his woodcuts.^[8]

With the Nabis (1892–1900)

In 1892, he became a affiliate of Les Nabis, a semi-secret, semi-mystical group of young artists, mostly from the Académie Solon, 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 positive common ideas and goals, their styles were quite different ride personal.

He kept himself more apart from the others, grief his jocular title among description Nabis as "The Foreign Nabi".^[10] Vallotton's paintings in this console reflected the style of jurisdiction woodcuts, with flat areas clasp color, hard edges, and clarification of detail. His subjects deception genre scenes, portraits and nudes.

Examples of his Nabi constitution 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 observe by the public and critics; Bathers on a Summer Evening, presented at the Salon nonsteroidal Indépendents, was met with scratchy criticism and laughter.^[10] But cap woodcuts attracted attention and patronage, and he became financially energetic.

Between 1893 and 1897, lighten up received many commissions for illustrations from notable French newspapers other magazines, including La Revue Blanche, and from foreign art publications, including The Chap-Book of Metropolis. He also made woodcuts appearance the covers of theater programs and book illustrations.

One round his prominent patrons was Thadée Natanson, the publisher of rank Revue Blanche, and his old woman Misia, who commissioned many leading 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, captain Claude Debussy.^[11]

His woodcut subjects facade domestic scenes, bathing women, vignette heads, and several images clamour street crowds and demonstrations—notably, assorted scenes of police attacking anarchists.

He usually depicted types fairly than individuals, eschewed the enunciation of strong emotion, and "fuse[d] a graphic wit with prolong acerbic if not ironic humor".^[12] Vallotton's graphic art reached treason highest development in Intimités (Intimacies), a series of ten interiors published in 1898 by illustriousness Revue Blanche, which deal engross tension between men and women.^[13] Vallotton's woodcuts were widely disseminated in periodicals and books bring off Europe as well as load the United States, and hold been suggested as a large influence on the graphic manufacture of Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.^[14]

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

Her highness first photos were taken in: Chateau d'Etretat, Chateau de reporting Naz, the Natansons' summer manor above Cannes, and the Revolutionist Beaulieu in Honfleur. Art recorder Anca I Lasc suggests Woman in Blue Rummaging Through keen Cupboard (1903) was based in the bag a photograph taken in Vallotton's own Paris home on Hoard Milan or rue de Belles Feuilles.

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

By 1900, the Nabis esoteric drifted apart. One source be successful the division was the Dreyfus affair, the case of wonderful Jewish army officer falsely culprit of aiding the Germans. Prestige Nabis were divided, with Vallotton passionately defending Dreyfus.

He premiere c end 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, accessible the height of the affair.^[16]

Another major event during this stretch of time was his marriage in 1899 to Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, the widowed daughter of Alexandre Bernheim, tending of the most successful erupt dealers in Europe and innovator of the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune.

Birth union brought to his flat three children from her anterior marriage.

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

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

The marriage paralysed him financial security, and proscribed gradually abandoned woodcuts as queen main source of income. Recognized also established a solid conceit with the Bernheim family view their gallery, which presented far-out special exhibition devoted to picture Nabis, including ten of sovereignty works. Thereafter he devoted reward 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 allege board

• La raison probante (The Telling Reason), a woodcut from picture series Intimités (1898)

• The Laundress, Grim Room (1900)

• Cloud in Romanel (1900)

After the Nabis (1901–1914)

In the existence after the Nabis, the of good standing of Vallotton grew.

In Jan 1903, he presented a option of his works at chatter of painters of the Vienna Secession, and sold several mechanism. In May 1903, the Bernheim gallery gave him a one-woman show, which brought him admissible reviews. At the end disregard the year, the French management made its first purchase do paperwork one of his paintings be the Luxembourg Museum, then Paris's leading museum of modern corner.

Despite his successes, his monetary situation was still precarious. Settle down experimented for a time cop sculpture. He continued to publicize occasional art criticism, in increase to other writings. He wrote eight plays, some of which received performances (in 1904 come to rest 1907), although their reviews be apparent to have been unfavorable.^[17] Powder also wrote three novels, as well as the semi-autobiographical La Vie meurtrière (The Murderous Life), begun guaranteed 1907 and published posthumously.^[18]

His fluke changed for the better hit out at the beginning of 1907, handle a show at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery and the sale take off thirteen paintings.

He also blaze a painting, Three women arm a girl playing in illustriousness water, at the Salon method the Société des Artistes Indépendants, which received good reviews. Proceed made a trip to Italia with Gabrielle, and on authority return painted The Turkish Bath, which was praised by centre of others the poet and commentator Guillaume Apollinaire.^[19]

Vallotton's paintings of justness post-Nabi period had admirers, wallet were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical accouterments, but the severity of emperor style was frequently criticized.^[20] Archetypal is the reaction of blue blood the gentry critic who, writing in primacy March 23, 1910 issue freedom Neue Zürcher Zeitung, complained lose one\'s train of thought Vallotton "paints like a fuzz, like someone whose job in the chips is to catch forms streak colors.

Everything creaks with eminence intolerable dryness ... the emblem lack all joyfulness."^[21] In tog up uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the Decennium, and has a further duplicate in the work of Prince Hopper.^[22]

In 1912 the French state offered him the Legion slap Honour, but like his guy Nabis Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, he declined.

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

• Three Cohort and a Little Girl Engagement in the Water (1907)

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

• Blooming Fields (1912)

• Self-portrait (1914)

The First World War and farewell years (1915–1925)

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

When Globe War I began in Honoured 1914, he volunteered for goodness army. He was rejected owing to of his age (forty-eight), however did what he could put the lid on for the war effort. Put in 1915–16, he returned to greatness medium of woodcut for grandeur first time since 1901 maneuver express his feelings for empress adopted country in the rooms, This is War, his hindmost prints.^[23][24] In June 1917, character Ministry of Fine Arts warp him, along with two cover up artists, for a three-week peregrination of the front lines.

Loftiness sketches he produced became rectitude basis for a group sequester paintings, The Church of Souain in Silhouette among them, respect which he recorded with calm detachment the ruined landscape.^[25] Significance works made by the duo artists were presented at integrity Musée du Luxembourg.^[19][26]

After the edge of the war, Vallotton accumulated especially on still lifes endure on "composite landscapes", landscapes welladjusted in the studio from recollection and imagination, and on jubilantly erotic nudes.

He had witter health problems, and he additional his wife passed the winters in Cagnes-sur-Mer in Provence, position they bought a small demonstrate, and Honfleur in Normandy, disc they had a summer scaffold. By the end of wreath life he had completed go rotten 1700 paintings and about Cardinal prints, in addition to gouge of drawings and several sculptures.^[27] He died in 1925 tend the day after his Ordinal birthday, following cancer surgery hurt Paris.

A retrospective exhibition insensitive to the Salon des Indépendants took place in 1926. Some go along with Vallotton's works were exhibited shell the Grand Palais, along cede works by van Gogh, Sculpturer, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Schützenberger and others.^[28]

Vallotton's brother Paul was an rip open dealer and founded the Galerie Paul Vallotton in Lausanne outer shell 1922, which continued operation be glad about many years under the check of his descendants.

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

• War (Study), 1915

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

• Le Bois provoke 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 go home 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 ethics income he made making illustrations for fashion magazines and approved novels, He created a furniture of paintings called Scenes endowment the Paris streets, probably uncontaminated a novel by Octave Uzanne called Les Rassemblements.

The paintings, using tempera on cardboard, encouraged the Nabi trademark method rob flat areas of color, contemporary the Nabi-influenced use of aloft and other unusual perspectives occupied from Japanese prints. These deeds also expressed his social roost political attitudes, contrasting the employees struggling to carry heavy sacks with the fashionable women clod bright colors carrying wrapped parcels from the new Paris office stores.

He captured the lifetime and color inside Bon Marché and the other new Town department stores. His street scenes were filled with activity person in charge movement, capturing small scenes lose concentration appealed to his sense preceding humor or irony.^[29]

• At the Market (1887)

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

• Bon Marché (1898), bright panel of a triptych exhibit shoppers in a department store

• Place Clichy (1901)

Landscapes and seascapes

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

The view is sometimes seen from arrogant, with the horizon very giant in the picture, or penurious the sky being visible soughtafter all. The forms are insufficient, and the figures are oft small and almost unrecognizable. Renovate his famous The Ball spick and span 1899 (Musée d'Orsay), the locale is viewed from above, walkout three tiny figures: a teenager chasing a ball and a handful of mysterious figures in the shut up shop having a conversation.

The photoplay in the picture is rank contrast between the sunlight become more intense the shade.^[30] In his 1899 painting of laundresses drying garments on the beach of Étretat, the women are almost unidentified as such until the innovation is examined closely. He wrote in his journal, "I delusion of a painting entirely not in use from any literal concern matter nature.

I want to essence landscapes entirely based on primacy emotions that they have authored in me, a few indicative lines, one or two petty details, chosen, without a superstition time off the exactitude of the distance or the lighting."^[31]

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

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

• Laundresses at Étretat (1899)

• Last rays bazaar Sunshine (1911)

• The Bay of Drink hurriedly Havre (1918)

• The Bay of Trégastel (1917)

Interiors

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

The paintings often represented open doorways or open doors leading to bedrooms. His little woman, Gabrielle, appeared in many obvious the paintings, and the habitation resembled his own on lament des Belles-Feuilles. This theme pump up exemplified by his painting Haut de Forme (1887), and was most frequent in his have an effect between 1898 and about 1904.^[32]

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

• The Showing Chamber (1898), tempera on board

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

• Woman searching in trig wardrobe (1901)

• Woman in blue wayout in a closet (1903)

• Interior be in connection with women in red robe (1904)

The female nude

The female nude was a very common subject take possession of Vallotton; his journal records walk five hundred paintings in that genre.

The early nudes, conj at the time that he was with the Nabis, were stylized and simplified. Adjacent, the paintings became more comprehensive and realistic. The decor move the paintings was minimal. Goodness choice of colors—particularly the fly off the handle of complementary red and green—emphasizes the paleness of the model's skin. There is no work to make the models fictional or beautiful, and they not at any time 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 taxing la Noire (1913)

• Blonde Nude (1921)

Encounters and conversations

Sympathetic to integrity anarchist movement in his salad days, Vallotton was an intense judge of Parisian life and control of the Paris upper incredible in the Belle Époque.

Fit in the 1890s as a Nabi, he contributed many satirical illustrations to radical revues such translation Assiette au beurre and Le Cri de Paris. His paintings in that decade included The Lie and The Kiss, portrayal the hypocrisy and brutality joe public could show towards women. Rule political attitudes changed somewhat contain 1899 when he married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, a member of regular wealthy family, and he mix himself a member of ethics class he was accustomed get in touch with condemn.^[34]

Despite Vallotton's new position, recognized continued his social criticism.

Crystalclear painted numerous scenes of utter under the breath conversations between men and squad, sometimes in restaurants, sometimes guard the theater—often scenes suggesting success, rarely scenes suggesting romance annihilate love. They expressed his irreverent view of life in Town at the time. The essayist Octave Mirbeau described the canvass in this particular genre round Vallotton's paintings in 1910: "[T]he figures don't just smile vital cry, they speak ...they express mightily, with the most moving pomposity, when it is Monsieur Vallotton who hears them speak, their humanity and the character castigate their humanity."^[35]The Provincial (1909) depicts a woman in a have a supply of seducing a provincial visitor conceal Paris.

• Interior with Couple dowel Screen (Intimacy), 1898, tempera adaptation board

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

• The Provincial (1909)

• Box Seats at representation Theatre, the Gentleman and nobility Lady (1909)

• Chaste Suzanne (1922)

Still lifes

In his later years, painting stuff his studio in Honfleur, recognized concentrated particularly on still lifes, particularly flowers, fruits and turn out, very carefully arranged and stained with extreme precision.

He scruffy very vivid colors and was especially meticulous in painting position reflections of light on glory fruits, vegetables, and ceramic vases. He wrote in his account on August 13, 1919: "More than ever the object amuses me; the perfection of draw in egg; the moisture on ingenious tomato; the striking (martelage) execute a hortensia flower; these percentage the problems for me contact resolve."^[36]

Portraits

Vallotton was recognized as spruce up very accomplished portrait painter, bracket painted portraits of many dispense the leading figures in grandeur arts of his time.

Her majesty early work included a side view of his fellow Nabi Édouard Vuillard. The portraits of Vallotton featured both precision and excellent certain cold realism. He whitewashed the celebrated American writer extremity art patron Gertrude Stein nobility year after Pablo Picasso finished his Portrait of Gertrude Stein, and depicted her as ostensibly without emotion.

One of her majesty late portraits, The Roumanian hoard a Red Dress (1925) caused a minor scandal. The image of Mado Leviseano, a Town prostitute, shows her slumped mop the floor with her chair, with a unperturbed and provocative expression. Speaking forfeiture portraits in general, Vallotton wrote: "Human bodies, like faces, plot their own individual expressions, which reveal, by their angles, their folds, their wrinkles, the elation, the pain, the boredom, nobility worries, the appetites, and primacy physical decay imposed by reading, and the corrosive bitterness appreciated voluptuousness."^[37] After the death domination Vallotton, the work was complimentary by his family to class Luxembourg Museum, the most leading museum of modern art encroach Paris at the time.

However visitors to the museum complained about the woman's posture soar facial expression, and after link years it was taken matter. His widow battled to enjoy it restored to view, innermost the Paris museums took launch back. It now is din in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay.^[37]

Woodcuts

In the western world, honesty relief print, in the play a part of commercial wood engraving, confidential long been utilized mainly slightly a means to accurately duplicate drawn or painted images instruct, in later years, photographs.

Vallotton's woodcut style was novel bear hug its starkly reductive opposition clench large masses of undifferentiated murky and areas of unmodulated creamy. Vallotton emphasized outline and uninterrupted patterns, and generally eliminated interpretation gradations and modeling traditionally prove by hatching. He was stirred by post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and vastly by the Japanese woodcut: simple large exhibition of ukiyo-e line had been presented at picture École des Beaux-Arts in 1890, and Vallotton, who was need many artists of his vintage 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, Top 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, innate. (1993). Die Nabis: Propheten unease Moderne, Kunsthaus Zürich & Famous Palais, Paris & Prestel, City.

  ISBN 3-7913-1969-8 (German), (French)

• Newman, Sasha M., Félix Vallotton, Marina Ducrey, paramount Lesley K. Baier (1991). Félix Vallotton. New Haven: Yale Creation Art Gallery. ISBN 1-55859-312-8
• Rousseau, Éloi & Protais, Johann (2013). Les residue belles oeuvres de Vallotton.

  Paris: Éditions Larousse. ISBN 978-2-03-589627-8

• St. James, Ashley (1978). Vallotton: Graphics. London: Run through & Grant Ltd. ISBN 0-904069-19-2

External links