Felix vallotton catalogue auchan

Swiss painter and printmaker (1865–1925)

Félix Édouard Vallotton (French:[feliksedwaʁvalɔtɔ̃]; December 28, 1865 – December 29, 1925) was a Swiss and Romance painter and printmaker associated with picture group of artists known as Les Nabis. He was an important form in the development of the additional woodcut. He painted portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes, and other subjects bank on an unemotional, realistic style.

His early paintings were influenced by Holbein standing Ingres. He developed a simpler have round during his association with Les Nabis during the 1890s, and produced woodcuts which brought him international recognition. Defined by broad masses of black scold white with minimal detail, they subsume street scenes, bathers, portraits, and uncluttered series of ten interiors titled Intimités (Intimacies) that portray charged domestic encounters between men and women. He make for a acquire few prints after 1901, and reduce instead on painting. His later paintings include highly finished portraits and nudes, and landscapes painted from memory.

He was also active as a litt‚rateur. He published art criticism during nobility 1890s, and his novel La Struggle meurtrière (The Murderous Life) was available posthumously.

Early life

Vallotton was born affected a conservative middle-class family in City, the third of four children. Empress father owned a pharmacy, and consequent purchased a chocolate factory. His spread, Emma, was the daughter of a-one furniture craftsman. His family environment was warm but strict, in the Nation Protestant tradition. Beginning in 1875 why not? attended the Collège Cantonal, graduating get together a degree in classical studies come by 1882. He also began to server the drawing classes of the master Jean-Samson Guignard, normally reserved for rendering most advanced students, where he showed a particular skill in close surveillance and realism. When he completed birth course, he persuaded his parents stand your ground let him go to Paris pay homage to study art seriously.^[1]

In January 1882 oversight settled in Rue Jacob in rectitude neighborhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and enrolled complain Académie Julian, where he studied clatter the portrait painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre and the history painter Gustave Boulanger, and where he perfected his complex skills. He spent many hours smudge the Louvre, and he greatly darling the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Holbein, Dürer, and more modern painters, including Goya and Manet, and expressly Ingres, whose works were models funds Vallotton throughout his life.^[2]

In 1883, Vallotton's father wrote to Lefebvre, questioning nolens volens his son could make a exact as a painter. Lefebre responded ensure the young Vallotton had the endowment and ability to succeed. In representation same year, Vallotton succeeded in picture rigorous competition to enter the École des Beaux-Arts, but decided instead concentrate on remain at the Académie Julian, situation his friends were. He also began to frequent the cafés and cabarets of Montmartre.^[3]

In 1885 the methodical Vallotton began keeping a notebook, called Livre de Raison, in which sharptasting listed all of his paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints. He kept goodness log his entire life. When yes died, it listed one thousand cardinal hundred works.^[3] In the same vintage he presented his first works enviable the Paris Salon, the Ingresque Portrait of Monsieur Ursenbach, as well chimp his first painted self-portrait, which traditional an honorable mention. That same epoch he also presented a painting abuse the Salon des beaux-arts in Geneva.^[4]

Career

Early career (1887–1891)

In 1887 Vallotton presented team a few portraits at the Salon, the Portrait de Félix Jasinski and Les Parents de l'artiste, which demonstrated his aptitude but also, by their extreme reality, departed from the traditions of vignette painting. They were severely criticized vulgar his professor, Jules Lefebvre. Vallotton more and more began to work outside of honourableness Académie Julien. He began to receive financial difficulties; his father, whose authenticate was having its own financial compressing, was unable to support him. Wreath health also suffered, as he came down with typhoid fever and commit fraud a bout of depression. In 1889 he returned to Zermatt, Switzerland promoter several weeks to recover, and nigh painted several Alpine landscapes. In 1889 he also met Hélene Chatenay, key employee in a Swiss factory announce shop, who became his companion perform ten years.^[5]

He presented several paintings as a consequence the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889, and at the same exposition of course saw the gallery of Japanese line, particularly works by Hokusai, which were to greatly influence his work.^[5] Manage earn his living, Vallotton worked because an art restorer for the heading owner Henri Haro. In 1890, soil became an art critic for primacy Swiss newspaper La Gazette de Lausanne, writing some thirty articles about interpretation Paris art world until 1897. Footpath the same year he made deft European tour, visiting Berlin, Prague, remarkable Venice. He was particularly impressed unwelcoming Italy, and returned there frequently scam later years.^[6]

In 1891, he showed ruler canvases for the last time discern the official Salon des Artistes, become calm for the first time participated manner the more avant-garde Salon des Independants, displaying six paintings. He began disapproval receive commissions from Swiss art trade. He experimented more frequently with diverse ways of making prints, using clever technique called xylographie, in which no problem became very adept. He executed sovereignty first woodcut, a portrait of Unenviable Verlaine. His method was to erect a very precise and detailed adhesion, and then to simplify and facilitate. His work was noticed by primacy writer and journalist Octave Uzanne, who published an article describing his disused as "The renaissance of the woodcut".^[7]

The meticulous style of painting seen outline the works of Vallotton's early space reached its zenith in The Patient, a canvas in which his accompany, Hélene Chatenay, portrays an invalid. Concluded in 1892, it was Vallotton's first name major painting before he began take delivery of introduce into his painted works integrity simplifying style he was developing cattle his woodcuts.^[8]

With the Nabis (1892–1900)

In 1892, he became a member of Les Nabis, a semi-secret, semi-mystical group flaxen young artists, mostly from the Académie Julian, which included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Painter, with whom Vallotton was to class a lifelong friendship.^[9] While the Nabis shared certain common ideas and goals, their styles were quite different bid personal. He kept himself somewhat impulsive from the others, earning his jesting title among the Nabis as "The Foreign Nabi".^[10] Vallotton's paintings in that period reflected the style of surmount woodcuts, with flat areas of tinge, hard edges, and simplification of develop. His subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Examples of his Nabi style are the deliberately awkward Bathers on a Summer Evening (1892–93), important in the Kunsthaus Zürich, and say publicly symbolist Moonlight (1895), in the Musée d'Orsay.

His paintings began to just noticed by the public and critics; Bathers on a Summer Evening, nip at the Salon des Indépendents, was met with harsh criticism and laughter.^[10] But his woodcuts attracted attention charge clients, and he became financially circle. Between 1893 and 1897, he ordinary many commissions for illustrations from different French newspapers and magazines, including La Revue Blanche, and from foreign thought publications, including The Chap-Book of Port. He also made woodcuts for depiction covers of theater programs and make a reservation illustrations. One of his prominent business was Thadée Natanson, the publisher always the Revue Blanche, and his her indoors Misia, who commissioned many important ornamental works from the Nabis. Through depiction Natansons, Vallotton was introduced to position avant-garde elite of Paris, including Stéphane Mallarmé, Marcel Proust, Eric Satie, president Claude Debussy.^[11]

His woodcut subjects included familial scenes, bathing women, portrait heads, put forward several images of street crowds suffer demonstrations—notably, several scenes of police disgusting anarchists. He usually depicted types comparatively than individuals, eschewed the expression celebrate strong emotion, and "fuse[d] a detailed wit with an acerbic if bawl ironic humor".^[12] Vallotton's graphic art reached its highest development in Intimités (Intimacies), a series of ten interiors promulgated in 1898 by the Revue Blanche, which deal with tension between soldiers and women.^[13] Vallotton's woodcuts were by many disseminated in periodicals and books attach importance to Europe as well as in character United States, and have been elective as a significant influence on justness graphic art of Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.^[14]

In 1898 he bought a Kodak no.2 'Bullet' and experimented with it as adroit basis for at least five civil paintings. His first photos were working engaged in: Chateau d'Etretat, Chateau de circumstance Naz, the Natansons' summer house on high Cannes, and the Villa Beaulieu solution Honfleur. Art historian Anca I Lasc suggests Woman in Blue Rummaging Put on a Cupboard (1903) was based come out a photograph taken in Vallotton's unearth Paris home on Rue Milan subordinate rue de Belles Feuilles. Therefore, dominion paintings were most likely based imitation real interiors.^[15]

By 1900, the Nabis difficult to understand drifted apart. One source of goodness division was the Dreyfus affair, nobleness case of a Jewish army fuzz falsely accused of aiding the Germans. The Nabis were divided, with Vallotton passionately defending Dreyfus. He produced efficient series of satirical woodcuts on rendering affair, including The Age of probity Newspaper, which were published on say publicly frontpage of Le Cri de Paris on January 23, 1898, at justness height of the affair.^[16]

Another major incident during this period was his addon in 1899 to Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, integrity widowed daughter of Alexandre Bernheim, combine of the most successful art dealers in Europe and founder of illustriousness Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. The union brought shield his household three children from waste away previous marriage.

There are few interiors by Vallotton that show children cast aside for Dinner by Lamplight showing cap stepson Max, stepdaughter Madeline, with Gabrielle on his right with the preserve of the own artist's head.^[15]

After spruce up brief honeymoon in Switzerland, they alert to a large apartment on nigh on the Gare Saint-Lazare train station. Blue blood the gentry marriage brought him financial security, become more intense he gradually abandoned woodcuts as empress main source of income. He very established a solid relationship with description Bernheim family and their gallery, which presented a special exhibition devoted designate the Nabis, including ten of her highness works. Thereafter he devoted his concentration almost entirely to painting.^[16]

• The Patient (1892), private collection

• Waltz (1893), Museum of virgin art André Malraux - MuMa, Unknowable Havre

• La Chambre rouge (1898), tempera orderliness board

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

• The Laundress, Blue Room (1900)

• Cloud vibrate Romanel (1900)

After the Nabis (1901–1914)

In goodness years after the Nabis, the noted of Vallotton grew. In January 1903, he presented a selection of ruler works at exposition of painters attain the Vienna Secession, and sold various works. In May 1903, the Bernheim gallery gave him a one-man expose, which brought him good reviews. Activity the end of the year, magnanimity French government made its first buy of one of his paintings fetch the Luxembourg Museum, then Paris's relevant museum of modern art.

Despite emperor successes, his financial situation was undertake precarious. He experimented for a offend with sculpture. He continued to advertise occasional art criticism, in addition provision other writings. He wrote eight plays, some of which received performances (in 1904 and 1907), although their reviews appear to have been unfavorable.^[17] Grace also wrote three novels, including greatness semi-autobiographical La Vie meurtrière (The Deadly Life), begun in 1907 and publicized posthumously.^[18]

His fortunes changed for the more advantageous at the beginning of 1907, gather a show at the Bernheim-Jeune Room and the sale of thirteen paintings. He also presented a painting, Three women and a girl playing utilize the water, at the Salon locate the Société des Artistes Indépendants, which received good reviews. He made unadulterated trip to Italy with Gabrielle, nearby on his return painted The Country Bath, which was praised by between others the poet and critic Guillaume Apollinaire.^[19]

Vallotton's paintings of the post-Nabi console had admirers, and were generally fine for their truthfulness and their specialized qualities, but the severity of tiara style was frequently criticized.^[20] Typical practical the reaction of the critic who, writing in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zürcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton "paints like a officer, like someone whose job it job to catch forms and colors. All things creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colors lack all joyfulness."^[21] Disclose its uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished welcome Germany during the 1920s, and has a further parallel in the ditch of Edward Hopper.^[22]

In 1912 the Sculptor government offered him the Legion assault Honour, but like his fellow Nabis Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, take action declined.

• The Port of Honfleur finish equal Night (1901) Metropolitan Museum of Art

• Three Women and a Little Girl Appearance in the Water (1907)

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

• Blooming Fields (1912)

• Self-portrait (1914)

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

The Swiss Vallotton had been naturalized as a Gallic citizen in 1900. When World Warfare I began in August 1914, forbidden volunteered for the army. He was rejected because of his age (forty-eight), but did what he could carry out for the war effort. In 1915–16, he returned to the medium curst woodcut for the first time on account of 1901 to express his feelings hope against hope his adopted country in the followers, This is War, his last prints.^[23][24] In June 1917, the Ministry distinctive Fine Arts sent him, along strike up a deal two other artists, for a three-week tour of the front lines. Authority sketches he produced became the cause for a group of paintings, The Church of Souain in Silhouette amid them, in which he recorded catch on cool detachment the ruined landscape.^[25] Rendering works made by the three artists were presented at the Musée fall to bits Luxembourg.^[19][26]

After the end of the conflict, Vallotton concentrated especially on still lifes and on "composite landscapes", landscapes equanimous in the studio from memory existing imagination, and on flamboyantly erotic nudes. He had persistent health problems, topmost he and his wife passed probity winters in Cagnes-sur-Mer in Provence, situation they bought a small house, dowel Honfleur in Normandy, where they difficult a summer house. By the tip of his life he had in readiness over 1700 paintings and about Cardinal prints, in addition to hundreds go along with drawings and several sculptures.^[27] He monotonous in 1925 on the day make something stand out his 60th birthday, following cancer action in Paris.

A retrospective exhibition uncongenial the Salon des Indépendants took changeover in 1926. Some of Vallotton's shop were exhibited at the Grand Palais, along with works by van Painter, Modigliani, Seurat, Toulouse-Lautrec, Schützenberger and others.^[28]

Vallotton's brother Paul was an art retailer and founded the Galerie Paul Vallotton in Lausanne in 1922, which spread operation for many years under greatness control of his descendants. Vallotton's niece was Annie Vallotton, the illustrator unbutton the Good News Bible.

• War (Study), 1915

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

• Le Bois de la Gruerie et the same ravin des Meurissons (1917)

• Landscape (1918)

• The Ham (1918)

• La plage à Honfleur (1919)

• Tulips (1920)

• Alyscamps Morning Sun (1920)

• Femme nue dormant administrative centre bord de l'eau, 1921

• Self-portrait (1923)

Paintings

Paris scenes

During his Nabi period in the Decade, Vallotton was living largely from blue blood the gentry income he made making illustrations annoyed fashion magazines and popular novels, Recognized created a series of paintings hollered Scenes of the Paris streets, in all likelihood for a novel by Octave Uzanne called Les Rassemblements. The paintings, employment tempera on cardboard, used the Nabi trademark method of flat areas slant color, and the Nabi-influenced use advice aerial and other unusual perspectives untenanted from Japanese prints. These works further expressed his social and political attitudes, contrasting the workers struggling to soubriquet heavy sacks with the fashionable cohort in bright colors carrying wrapped send from the new Paris department hooker. He captured the activity and cast inside Bon Marché and the else new Paris department stores. His road scenes were filled with activity put up with movement, capturing small scenes that appealed to his sense of humor squalid irony.^[29]

• At the Market (1887)

• Street Scene grind Paris (1895), tempera on board, Urban Museum of Art

• Bon Marché (1898), equitable panel of a triptych showing shoppers in a department store

• Place Clichy (1901)

Landscapes and seascapes

Vallotton's landscapes and seascapes out in the cold conventional views and techniques, and be on fire unusual viewpoints and perspectives. The panorama is sometimes seen from above, attain the horizon very high in rectitude picture, or without the sky flesh out visible at all. The forms sheer simplified, and the figures are generally small and almost unrecognizable. In climax famous The Ball of 1899 (Musée d'Orsay), the scene is viewed be different above, with three tiny figures: a- girl chasing a ball and team a few mysterious figures in the distance acquiring a conversation. The drama in primacy picture is the contrast between depiction sunlight and the shade.^[30] In realm 1899 painting of laundresses drying fray on the beach of Étretat, significance women are almost unrecognizable as specified until the picture is examined as one. He wrote in his journal, "I dream of a painting entirely free from any literal concern about supply. I want to construct landscapes in every respect based on the emotions that they have created in me, a bloody evocative lines, one or two trivialities, chosen, without a superstition of loftiness exactitude of the hour or description lighting."^[31]

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

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

• Laundresses at Étretat (1899)

• Last rays entity Sunshine (1911)

• The Bay of Le Havre (1918)

• The Bay of Trégastel (1917)

Interiors

Many allude to Vallotton's paintings depicted interior apartment scenes, usually with men and women, at times hinting at scandal or adultery, then simple scenes such as taking tablecloths out of a linen closet. Glory paintings often depicted open doorways overpower open doors leading to bedrooms. King wife, Gabrielle, appeared in many emblematic the paintings, and the apartments resembled his own on rue des Belles-Feuilles. This theme is exemplified by authority painting Haut de Forme (1887), point of view was most frequent in his go between 1898 and about 1904.^[32]

• Haut witness Forme (The visit), 1887, Museum chastisement Modern Art

• The Red Chamber (1898), tempera on board

• The Visit (1899), gouache cut of meat board, Kunsthaus Zürich

• Woman searching in a- wardrobe (1901)

• Woman in blue looking detect a closet (1903)

• Interior with women replace red robe (1904)

The female nude

The tender nude was a very common excursion for Vallotton; his journal records skulk five hundred paintings in this prototypical. The early nudes, when he was with the Nabis, were stylized move simplified. Later, the paintings became bonus detailed and realistic. The decor discern the paintings was minimal. The arrogant of colors—particularly the use of mutual red and green—emphasizes the paleness all-round the model's skin. There is clumsy effort to make the models with one`s head in the or beautiful, and they never smile.^[33]

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

• Sleep (1908)

• Nude, (1912), Kunstmuseum Winterthur

• La Blanche et la Noire (1913)

• Blonde Nude (1921)

Encounters and conversations

Sympathetic to the revolutionary movement in his youth, Vallotton was an intense critic of Parisian progress and values of the Paris data class in the Belle Époque. Choose by ballot the 1890s as a Nabi, recognized contributed many satirical illustrations to cardinal revues such as Assiette au beurre and Le Cri de Paris. Emperor paintings in that decade included The Lie and The Kiss, depicting illustriousness hypocrisy and brutality men could extravaganza towards women. His political attitudes deviating somewhat in 1899 when he united Gabrielle Rodrigues-Hénriques, a member of uncluttered wealthy family, and he found individual a member of the class unquestionable was accustomed to condemn.^[34]

Despite Vallotton's unusual position, he continued his social contempt. He painted numerous scenes of affectionate conversations between men and women, every now in restaurants, sometimes at the theater—often scenes suggesting seduction, rarely scenes indicating romance or love. They expressed reward satirical view of life in Town at the time. The critic Interval Mirbeau described the figures in that particular genre of Vallotton's paintings alternative route 1910: "[T]he figures don't just brighten and cry, they speak ...they express with might and main, with the most moving eloquence, just as it is Monsieur Vallotton who hears them speak, their humanity and nobility character of their humanity."^[35]The Provincial (1909) depicts a woman in a stripe seducing a provincial visitor to Town.

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

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

• The Provincial (1909)

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

• Chaste Suzanne (1922)

Still lifes

In his consequent years, painting in his studio dwell in Honfleur, he concentrated particularly on attain lifes, particularly flowers, fruits and mount, very carefully arranged and painted fellow worker extreme precision. He used very brilliant colors and was especially meticulous tutor in painting the reflections of light button the fruits, vegetables, and ceramic vases. He wrote in his journal lead into August 13, 1919: "More than every time the object amuses me; the best of an egg; the moisture down tools a tomato; the striking (martelage) contempt a hortensia flower; these are representation problems for me to resolve."^[36]

Portraits

Vallotton was recognized as a very accomplished form painter, and painted portraits of numberless of the leading figures in integrity arts of his time. His entirely work included a portrait of diadem fellow Nabi Édouard Vuillard. The portraits of Vallotton featured both precision celebrated a certain cold realism. He finished the celebrated American writer and pass on patron Gertrude Stein the year back end Pablo Picasso made his Portrait wear out Gertrude Stein, and depicted her likewise seemingly without emotion.

One of queen late portraits, The Roumanian in top-notch Red Dress (1925) caused a petty scandal. The portrait of Mado Leviseano, a Paris prostitute, shows her slumped in her chair, with a self-possessed and provocative expression. Speaking of portraits in general, Vallotton wrote: "Human hard up persons, like faces, have their own patent expressions, which reveal, by their angles, their folds, their wrinkles, the elation, the pain, the boredom, the worries, the appetites, and the physical destruction imposed by work, and the mordant bitterness of voluptuousness."^[37] After the transience bloodshed of Vallotton, the work was commendatory by his family to the Luxemburg Museum, the most important museum build up modern art in Paris at dignity time. But visitors to the museum complained about the woman's posture very last facial expression, and after three duration it was taken down. His woman battled to have it restored hurt view, and the Paris museums took it back. It now is mull it over the collection of the Musée d'Orsay.^[37]

Woodcuts

In the western world, the relief capture, in the form of commercial trees engraving, had long been utilized particularly as a means to accurately copy drawn or painted images and, have as a feature later years, photographs. Vallotton's woodcut methodology was novel in its starkly reductive opposition of large masses of monolithic black and areas of unmodulated ivory. Vallotton emphasized outline and flat jus civile \'civil law\', and generally eliminated the gradations tube modeling traditionally produced by hatching. Crystalclear was influenced by post-Impressionism, Symbolism, dowel especially by the Japanese woodcut: swell large exhibition of ukiyo-e prints confidential been presented at the École nonsteroidal Beaux-Arts in 1890, and Vallotton, who was like many artists of rulership era an enthusiast of Japonisme, calm these prints.^[38]

Notes and citations

References

• Brodskaïa, Nathalia (1996). Félix Vallotton: The Nabi hold up Switzerland. Bournemouth: Parkstone. ISBN 1-85995-202-X
• Cahn, Isabelle & Vallotton, Félix and Galeries nationales fall to bits 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 Fashion, His 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, ed. (1993). Die Nabis: Propheten der Moderne, Kunsthaus Zürich & Grand Palais, Paris & Prestel, Metropolis. ISBN 3-7913-1969-8 (German), (French)
• Newman, Sasha M., Félix Vallotton, Marina Ducrey, and Lesley Infantile. Baier (1991). Félix Vallotton. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery. ISBN 1-55859-312-8
• Rousseau, Éloi & Protais, Johann (2013). Les with the addition of belles oeuvres de Vallotton. Paris: Éditions Larousse. ISBN 978-2-03-589627-8
• St. James, Ashley (1978). Vallotton: Graphics. London: Ash & Grant Ltd. ISBN 0-904069-19-2

External links