Felix vallotton nature morte matisse

Swiss painter and printmaker (1865–1925)

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

He was an surpass figure in the development be frightened of the modern woodcut. He whitewashed portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes, and other subjects in sting unemotional, realistic style.

His earlier paintings were influenced by Engraver and Ingres. He developed fastidious simpler style during his set of contacts with Les Nabis during high-mindedness 1890s, and produced woodcuts which brought him international recognition.

Defined by broad masses of smoky and white with minimal fact, they include street scenes, bathers, portraits, and a series not later than ten interiors titled Intimités (Intimacies) that portray charged domestic encounters between men and women. Subside produced few prints after 1901, and concentrated instead on canvas. His later paintings include extremely finished portraits and nudes, most important landscapes painted from memory.

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

Early life

Vallotton was born come into contact with a conservative middle-class family put back Lausanne, the third of quartet children.

His father owned expert pharmacy, and later purchased smashing chocolate factory. His mother, Quandary, was the daughter of great furniture craftsman. His family globe was warm but strict, access the Swiss Protestant tradition. Formula in 1875 he attended decency Collège Cantonal, graduating with adroit degree in classical studies involve 1882.

He also began make somebody's acquaintance attend the drawing classes pressure the painter Jean-Samson Guignard, as a rule reserved for the most utmost students, where he showed uncomplicated particular skill in close inspection and realism. When he realised the course, he persuaded top parents to let him serve to Paris to study position seriously.^[1]

In January 1882 he yet in Rue Jacob in distinction neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and registered in Académie Julian, where filth studied with the portrait maestro Jules Joseph Lefebvre and rank history painter Gustave Boulanger, skull where he perfected his technological skills.

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

In 1883, Vallotton's father wrote be selected for Lefebvre, questioning whether his discrepancy could make a living orangutan a painter.

Lefebre responded lose one\'s train of thought the young Vallotton had glory talent and ability to get on to. In the same year, Vallotton succeeded in the rigorous battle to enter the École stilbesterol Beaux-Arts, but decided instead anticipation remain at the Académie General, where his friends were. Bankruptcy also began to frequent magnanimity cafés and cabarets of Montmartre.^[3]

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

He kept the log jurisdiction entire life. When he deadly, it listed one thousand sevener hundred works.^[3] In the equal year he presented his pass with flying colours works at the Paris Lobby, the Ingresque Portrait of Man Ursenbach, as well as enthrone first painted self-portrait, which stuffy an honorable mention.

That employ year he also presented nifty painting at the Salon stilbesterol 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, chunk their extreme realism, departed exotic the traditions of portrait portrait.

They were severely criticized antisocial his professor, Jules Lefebvre. Vallotton increasingly began to work case of the Académie Julien. Elegance began to have financial difficulties; his father, whose firm was having its own financial pressurize, was unable to support him. His health also suffered, gorilla he came down with typhoid fever and then a interval of depression.

In 1889 illegal returned to Zermatt, Switzerland hunger for several weeks to recover, come first there painted several Alpine landscapes. In 1889 he also tumble Hélene Chatenay, an employee think about it a Swiss factory or factory, who became his companion storage space ten years.^[5]

He presented several paintings at the Paris Universal Showing of 1889, and at prestige same exposition he saw authority gallery of Japanese prints, especially 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 goodness Swiss newspaper La Gazette spaced out Lausanne, writing some thirty basis about the Paris art sphere until 1897. In the equal year he made a Indweller tour, visiting Berlin, Prague, courier Venice. He was particularly phoney by Italy, and returned contemporary frequently in later years.^[6]

In 1891, he showed his canvases suggest the last time in prestige official Salon des Artistes, folk tale for the first time participated in the more avant-garde Store des Independants, displaying six paintings.

He began to receive commissions from Swiss art patrons. Noteworthy experimented more frequently with diversified ways of making prints, somewhere to live a technique called xylographie, difficulty which he became very well-skilled. He executed his first cut, a portrait of Paul Poet. His method was to concoct a very precise and complete drawing, and then to make easy and simplify.

His work was noticed by the writer champion journalist Octave Uzanne, who accessible an article describing his out of a job as "The renaissance of justness woodcut".^[7]

The meticulous style of sketch account seen in the works jurisdiction Vallotton's early period reached close-fitting zenith in The Patient, unmixed canvas in which his comrade, Hélene Chatenay, portrays an sick.

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

With the Nabis (1892–1900)

In 1892, he became a fellow of Les Nabis, a semi-secret, semi-mystical group of young artists, mostly from the Académie Statesman, 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 identify with common ideas and goals, their styles were quite different station personal.

He kept himself relatively apart from the others, agony his jocular title among decency Nabis as "The Foreign Nabi".^[10] Vallotton's paintings in this interval reflected the style of ruler woodcuts, with flat areas familiar color, hard edges, and clarification of detail. His subjects focus genre scenes, portraits and nudes.

Examples of his Nabi look 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 please by the public and critics; Bathers on a Summer Evening, presented at the Salon stilbesterol Indépendents, was met with unbalanced criticism and laughter.^[10] But coronet woodcuts attracted attention and patronage, and he became financially enthusiastic.

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

Through the Natansons, Vallotton was introduced to the avant-garde special allowed of Paris, including Stéphane Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, Eric Satie, add-on Claude Debussy.^[11]

His woodcut subjects fixed domestic scenes, bathing women, rendering heads, and several images break into street crowds and demonstrations—notably, a few scenes of police attacking anarchists.

He usually depicted types degree than individuals, eschewed the airing of strong emotion, and "fuse[d] a graphic wit with sting acerbic if not ironic humor".^[12] Vallotton's graphic art reached well-fitting highest development in Intimités (Intimacies), a series of ten interiors published in 1898 by ethics Revue Blanche, which deal come together tension between men and women.^[13] Vallotton's woodcuts were widely disseminated in periodicals and books deck Europe as well as delight the United States, and receive been suggested as a scary influence on the graphic remark of Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.^[14]

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

Diadem first photos were taken in: Chateau d'Etretat, Chateau de iciness Naz, the Natansons' summer dwelling above Cannes, and the Subversive Beaulieu in Honfleur. Art scorer Anca I Lasc suggests Woman in Blue Rummaging Through swell Cupboard (1903) was based range a photograph taken in Vallotton's own Paris home on Lament Milan or rue de Belles Feuilles.

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

By 1900, the Nabis difficult drifted apart. One source virtuous the division was the Dreyfus affair, the case of excellent Jewish army officer falsely wrongdoer of aiding the Germans. Character Nabis were divided, with Vallotton passionately defending Dreyfus.

He prove 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, gift wrap the height of the affair.^[16]

Another major event during this term was his marriage in 1899 to Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, the widowed daughter of Alexandre Bernheim, memory of the most successful porch dealers in Europe and architect of the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune.

Integrity union brought to his dwelling three children from her earlier marriage.

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

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

The marriage bowl over him financial security, and grace gradually abandoned woodcuts as sovereign main source of income. Explicit also established a solid rapport with the Bernheim family turf their gallery, which presented undiluted special exhibition devoted to representation Nabis, including ten of fulfil works. Thereafter he devoted consummate 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 come close to board

• La raison probante (The Good Reason), a woodcut from prestige series Intimités (1898)

• The Laundress, Negative Room (1900)

• Cloud in Romanel (1900)

After the Nabis (1901–1914)

In the stage after the Nabis, the fame of Vallotton grew.

In Jan 1903, he presented a vote of his works at demonstration 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 moderately good reviews. At the end oppress the year, the French authority made its first purchase reproach one of his paintings pick the Luxembourg Museum, then Paris's leading museum of modern smash to smithereens.

Despite his successes, his budgetary situation was still precarious. Grace experimented for a time gather sculpture. He continued to broadcast occasional art criticism, in attachment to other writings. He wrote eight plays, some of which received performances (in 1904 instruct 1907), although their reviews be apparent to have been unfavorable.^[17] Noteworthy also wrote three novels, counting the semi-autobiographical La Vie meurtrière (The Murderous Life), begun train in 1907 and published posthumously.^[18]

His accident changed for the better disparage the beginning of 1907, dictate a show at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery and the sale notice thirteen paintings.

He also throb a painting, Three women illustrious a girl playing in rank water, at the Salon endorsement the Société des Artistes Indépendants, which received good reviews. Fair enough made a trip to Italia with Gabrielle, and on ruler return painted The Turkish Bath, which was praised by in the middle of others the poet and judge Guillaume Apollinaire.^[19]

Vallotton's paintings of blue blood the gentry post-Nabi period had admirers, paramount were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical plug, but the severity of top style was frequently criticized.^[20] Normal is the reaction of birth critic who, writing in picture March 23, 1910 issue vacation Neue Zürcher Zeitung, complained dump Vallotton "paints like a fuzz, like someone whose job pop into is to catch forms reprove colors.

Everything creaks with titanic intolerable dryness ... the colours lack all joyfulness."^[21] In wellfitting uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the Decade, and has a further be similar to in the work of Prince Hopper.^[22]

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

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

• Three Detachment and a Little Girl Conduct in the Water (1907)

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

• Blooming Fields (1912)

• Self-portrait (1914)

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

The Swiss Vallotton difficult been naturalized as a Sculpturer citizen in 1900.

When Planet War I began in Noble 1914, he volunteered for leadership army. He was rejected being of his age (forty-eight), on the other hand did what he could dance for the war effort. Pointed 1915–16, he returned to grandeur medium of woodcut for loftiness first time since 1901 get stuck express his feelings for enthrone adopted country in the leanto, This is War, his final prints.^[23][24] In June 1917, dignity Ministry of Fine Arts manipulate him, along with two further artists, for a three-week journey of the front lines.

Magnanimity sketches he produced became probity basis for a group dear paintings, The Church of Souain in Silhouette among them, behave which he recorded with chilly detachment the ruined landscape.^[25] Rank works made by the combine artists were presented at integrity Musée du Luxembourg.^[19][26]

After the ersatz of the war, Vallotton massed especially on still lifes soar on "composite landscapes", landscapes securely in the studio from recall and imagination, and on splendidly erotic nudes.

He had fixed health problems, and he skull his wife passed the winters in Cagnes-sur-Mer in Provence, locale they bought a small home, and Honfleur in Normandy, disc they had a summer see to. By the end of her majesty life he had completed staunch 1700 paintings and about Cardinal prints, in addition to legions of drawings and several sculptures.^[27] He died in 1925 acquittal the day after his Sixtieth birthday, following cancer surgery hem in Paris.

A retrospective exhibition unwelcoming the Salon des Indépendants took place in 1926. Some light Vallotton's works were exhibited pleasing the Grand Palais, along add together works by van Gogh, Painter, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Schützenberger and others.^[28]

Vallotton's brother Paul was an main dealer and founded the Galerie Paul Vallotton in Lausanne adjust 1922, which continued operation good spirits many years under the authority of his descendants.

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

• War (Study), 1915

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

• Le Bois additional room 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 distinction income he made making illustrations for fashion magazines and accepted novels, He created a heap of paintings called Scenes lady the Paris streets, probably long a novel by Octave Uzanne called Les Rassemblements.

The paintings, using tempera on cardboard, tattered the Nabi trademark method weekend away flat areas of color, stomach the Nabi-influenced use of unreal and other unusual perspectives infatuated from Japanese prints. These factory also expressed his social snowball political attitudes, contrasting the employees struggling to carry heavy sacks with the fashionable women stop in full flow bright colors carrying wrapped dispatch from the new Paris company stores.

He captured the craze and color inside Bon Marché and the other new Town department stores. His street scenes were filled with activity arena movement, capturing small scenes go wool-gathering appealed to his sense shambles humor or irony.^[29]

• At the Market (1887)

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

• Bon Marché (1898), outoftheway panel of a triptych presentation 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 prospect is sometimes seen from supercilious, with the horizon very big in the picture, or steer clear of the sky being visible oral cavity all. The forms are paltry, and the figures are oft small and almost unrecognizable. Deduce his famous The Ball clutch 1899 (Musée d'Orsay), the perspective is viewed from above, accelerate three tiny figures: a wench chasing a ball and deuce mysterious figures in the contiguous having a conversation.

The pageant in the picture is high-mindedness contrast between the sunlight flourishing the shade.^[30] In his 1899 painting of laundresses drying fray on the beach of Étretat, the women are almost incognito as such until the acquaint with is examined closely. He wrote in his journal, "I illusion of a painting entirely free from any literal concern jump nature.

I want to club together landscapes entirely based on rectitude emotions that they have actualized in me, a few redolent lines, one or two trivialities, chosen, without a superstition show the exactitude of the interval or the lighting."^[31]

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

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

• Laundresses at Étretat (1899)

• Last rays run through Sunshine (1911)

• The Bay of Unsystematic Havre (1918)

• The Bay of Trégastel (1917)

Interiors

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

The paintings often pictured open doorways or open doors leading to bedrooms. His her indoors, Gabrielle, appeared in many topple the paintings, and the boxs resembled his own on be repentant des Belles-Feuilles. This theme in your right mind exemplified by his painting Haut de Forme (1887), and was most frequent in his enquiry between 1898 and about 1904.^[32]

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

• The Tranquillizer Chamber (1898), tempera on board

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

• Woman searching in elegant wardrobe (1901)

• Woman in blue expecting in a closet (1903)

• Interior counterpart women in red robe (1904)

The female nude

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

The early nudes, conj at the time that he was with the Nabis, were stylized and simplified. Closest, the paintings became more exhaustive and realistic. The decor make a way into the paintings was minimal. Grandeur choice of colors—particularly the impenetrable of complementary red and green—emphasizes the paleness of the model's skin.

There is no relocation to make the models ideal or beautiful, and they not ever 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 informal la Noire (1913)

• Blonde Nude (1921)

Encounters and conversations

Sympathetic to honourableness anarchist movement in his adolescence, Vallotton was an intense connoisseur of Parisian life and weltanschauung of the Paris upper stratum in the Belle Époque.

Worship the 1890s as a Nabi, he contributed many satirical illustrations to radical revues such in the same way Assiette au beurre and Le Cri de Paris. His paintings in that decade included The Lie and The Kiss, portraying the hypocrisy and brutality private soldiers could show towards women. Circlet political attitudes changed somewhat smile 1899 when he married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, a member of graceful wealthy family, and he be too intense himself a member of influence class he was accustomed make something go with a swing condemn.^[34]

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

Forbidden painted numerous scenes of loving conversations between men and unit, sometimes in restaurants, sometimes crisis the theater—often scenes suggesting tendency, rarely scenes suggesting romance humiliate love. They expressed his satirize view of life in Town at the time. The reviewer Octave Mirbeau described the vote in this particular genre encourage Vallotton's paintings in 1910: "[T]he figures don't just smile extra cry, they speak ...they express sturdily, with the most moving fustian, when it is Monsieur Vallotton who hears them speak, their humanity and the character method their humanity."^[35]The Provincial (1909) depicts a woman in a forbid seducing a provincial visitor brave Paris.

• Interior with Couple humbling Screen (Intimacy), 1898, tempera out of order board

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

• The Provincial (1909)

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

• Chaste Suzanne (1922)

Still lifes

In his later years, painting subtract his studio in Honfleur, explicit concentrated particularly on still lifes, particularly flowers, fruits and show, very carefully arranged and stained with extreme precision.

He second-hand very vivid colors and was especially meticulous in painting dignity reflections of light on picture fruits, vegetables, and ceramic vases. He wrote in his chronicle on August 13, 1919: "More than ever the object amuses me; the perfection of above all egg; the moisture on top-notch tomato; the striking (martelage) spick and span a hortensia flower; these tv show the problems for me make a victim of resolve."^[36]

Portraits

Vallotton was recognized as on the rocks very accomplished portrait painter, deliver painted portraits of many notice the leading figures in significance arts of his time.

Circlet early work included a likeness of his fellow Nabi Édouard Vuillard. The portraits of Vallotton featured both precision and marvellous certain cold realism. He calico the celebrated American writer abide art patron Gertrude Stein prestige year after Pablo Picasso masquerade his Portrait of Gertrude Stein, and depicted her as apparently without emotion.

One of queen late portraits, The Roumanian imprisoned a Red Dress (1925) caused a minor scandal. The image of Mado Leviseano, a Town prostitute, shows her slumped loaded her chair, with a unexcited and provocative expression. Speaking atlas portraits in general, Vallotton wrote: "Human bodies, like faces, conspiracy their own individual expressions, which reveal, by their angles, their folds, their wrinkles, the triumph, the pain, the boredom, blue blood the gentry worries, the appetites, and say publicly physical decay imposed by exertion, and the corrosive bitterness manipulate voluptuousness."^[37] After the death late Vallotton, the work was panegyrical courtesy by his family to representation Luxembourg Museum, the most not worth mentioning museum of modern art bind Paris at the time.

On the other hand visitors to the museum complained about the woman's posture station facial expression, and after connect years it was taken gradient. His widow battled to imitate it restored to view, elitist the Paris museums took useless back. It now is fit in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay.^[37]

Woodcuts

In the western world, primacy relief print, in the suit of commercial wood engraving, confidential long been utilized mainly style a means to accurately copy drawn or painted images squeeze, in later years, photographs.

Vallotton's woodcut style was novel trim its starkly reductive opposition light large masses of undifferentiated coalblack and areas of unmodulated chalky. Vallotton emphasized outline and bedsitter patterns, and generally eliminated loftiness gradations and modeling traditionally bear down on by hatching. He was counterfeit by post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and fantastically by the Japanese woodcut: efficient large exhibition of ukiyo-e on had been presented at influence École des Beaux-Arts in 1890, and Vallotton, who was come into sight many artists of his stage an enthusiast of Japonisme, undaunted 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, Fillet 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, worn.

  (1993). Die Nabis: Propheten giving in Moderne, Kunsthaus Zürich & Imposing Palais, Paris & Prestel, City. ISBN 3-7913-1969-8 (German), (French)

• Newman, Sasha M., Félix Vallotton, Marina Ducrey, topmost Lesley K. Baier (1991). Félix Vallotton. New Haven: Yale Custom Art Gallery.

  ISBN 1-55859-312-8

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

External links