“The portrait I do best is of the person I know best.” - Nadar
Félix Edouard Vallotton (December 28, 1865 – December 29, 1925) was a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated with Les Nabis. He was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut.
He was born into a conservative middle-class family in Lausanne, and there he attended Collège Cantonal, graduating with a degree in classical studies in 1882. In that year he moved to Paris to study art under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger at the Académie Julian. He spent many hours in the Louvre, where he greatly admired the works of Holbein, Dürer and Ingres; these artists would remain exemplars for Vallotton throughout his life. Vallotton’s earliest paintings, chiefly portraits, are in the academic tradition. In 1885 he painted the Ingresque Portrait of Monsieur Ursenbach as well as his first painted self-portrait, which received an honourable mention at the Salon des artistes français in 1886.
During the following decade Vallotton painted, wrote art criticism and made a number of prints. In 1891 he executed his first woodcut, a portrait of Paul Verlaine. The many woodcuts he produced during the 1890s were recognised as innovative, and established Vallotton as a leader in the revival of true woodcut as an artistic medium. In the western world, the relief print, in the form of commercial wood engraving, had long been utilised mainly as a means to accurately reproduce drawn or painted images and, latterly, photographs. Vallotton’s woodcut style was novel in its starkly reductive opposition of large masses of undifferentiated black and areas of unmodulated white. Vallotton emphasised outline and flat patterns, and generally eliminated the gradations and modelling traditionally produced by hatching. He was influenced by post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and especially by the Japanese woodcut.
His woodcut subjects included domestic scenes, bathing women, portrait heads, and several images of street crowds and demonstrations (notably, several scenes of police attacking anarchists). He usually depicted types rather than individuals, avoided the expression of strong emotion, and fused a graphic wit with an acerbic if not ironic humour. Vallotton’s graphic art reached its highest development in Intimités (Intimacies), a series of ten interiors published in 1898 by the Revue Blanche, which deal with tension between men and women. Vallotton's woodcuts were widely disseminated in periodicals and books in Europe as well as in the United States, and have been suggested as a significant influence on the graphic art of Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
By 1892 he was affiliated with Les Nabis, a group of young artists that included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form a lifelong friendship. During the 1890s, when Vallotton was closely allied with the avant-garde, his paintings reflected the style of his woodcuts, with flat areas of colour, hard edges, and simplification of detail. His subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Examples of his Nabi style 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.
In 1899 Vallotton married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, a wealthy young widow with three children, and in 1900 he attained French citizenship. Around 1899, his printmaking activity diminished as he concentrated on painting, developing a sober, often bitter realism independently of the artistic mainstream. His “Portrait of Gertrude Stein” (1907) was painted as an apparent response to Picasso’s portrait of the previous year, and in “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”, Stein described the very methodical way in which Vallotton painted it, working from top to bottom as if lowering a curtain across the canvas.
Vallotton’s paintings of the post-Nabi period found admirers, and were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical qualities, but the severity of his style was frequently criticised. Typical is the reaction of the critic who, writing in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zürcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton “paints like a policeman, like someone whose job it is to catch forms and colors. Everything creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colours lack all joyfulness.” In its uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the 1920s, and has a further parallel in the work of Edward Hopper.
He continued to publish occasional art criticism, in addition to other writings. He wrote eight plays, some of which received performances (in 1904 and 1907), although their reviews appear to have been unfavourable. He also wrote three novels, including the semi-autobiographical La Vie Meurtrière (The Murderous Life), begun in 1907 and published posthumously.
Vallotton responded in 1914 to the coming of the First World War by volunteering for the French army, but he was rejected because of his age. In 1915–16 he returned to the medium of woodcut for the first time since 1901 to express his feelings for his adopted country in the series, “This is War”, his last prints. He subsequently spent three weeks on a tour of the Champagne front in 1917, on a commission from the Ministry of Fine Arts. The sketches he produced became the basis for a group of paintings, “The Church of Souain in Silhouette” among them, in which he recorded with cool detachment the ruined landscape.
In his last years Félix Vallotton concentrated especially on still lifes and on “composite landscapes”, landscapes composed in the studio from memory and imagination. Always a prolific artist, by the end of his life he had completed over 1700 paintings and about 200 prints, in addition to hundreds of drawings and several sculptures. He died on the day after his 60th birthday, following cancer surgery in Paris in 1925. His brother Paul was an art dealer; he founded the Galerie Paul Vallotton in Lausanne in 1922, which continued operation for many years under the control of his descendants.
The painting above is “Felix Jasinski in His Printmaking Studio”, painted in 1887. Feliks Stanisław Jasiński (1862-1901) was a Polish painter and graphic artist. He moved he moved permanently to Paris in 1882 and enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he met Valotton. This is one of my favourite early works of Valotton…
Félix Edouard Vallotton (December 28, 1865 – December 29, 1925) was a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated with Les Nabis. He was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut.
He was born into a conservative middle-class family in Lausanne, and there he attended Collège Cantonal, graduating with a degree in classical studies in 1882. In that year he moved to Paris to study art under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger at the Académie Julian. He spent many hours in the Louvre, where he greatly admired the works of Holbein, Dürer and Ingres; these artists would remain exemplars for Vallotton throughout his life. Vallotton’s earliest paintings, chiefly portraits, are in the academic tradition. In 1885 he painted the Ingresque Portrait of Monsieur Ursenbach as well as his first painted self-portrait, which received an honourable mention at the Salon des artistes français in 1886.
During the following decade Vallotton painted, wrote art criticism and made a number of prints. In 1891 he executed his first woodcut, a portrait of Paul Verlaine. The many woodcuts he produced during the 1890s were recognised as innovative, and established Vallotton as a leader in the revival of true woodcut as an artistic medium. In the western world, the relief print, in the form of commercial wood engraving, had long been utilised mainly as a means to accurately reproduce drawn or painted images and, latterly, photographs. Vallotton’s woodcut style was novel in its starkly reductive opposition of large masses of undifferentiated black and areas of unmodulated white. Vallotton emphasised outline and flat patterns, and generally eliminated the gradations and modelling traditionally produced by hatching. He was influenced by post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and especially by the Japanese woodcut.
His woodcut subjects included domestic scenes, bathing women, portrait heads, and several images of street crowds and demonstrations (notably, several scenes of police attacking anarchists). He usually depicted types rather than individuals, avoided the expression of strong emotion, and fused a graphic wit with an acerbic if not ironic humour. Vallotton’s graphic art reached its highest development in Intimités (Intimacies), a series of ten interiors published in 1898 by the Revue Blanche, which deal with tension between men and women. Vallotton's woodcuts were widely disseminated in periodicals and books in Europe as well as in the United States, and have been suggested as a significant influence on the graphic art of Edvard Munch, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.
By 1892 he was affiliated with Les Nabis, a group of young artists that included Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Vuillard, with whom Vallotton was to form a lifelong friendship. During the 1890s, when Vallotton was closely allied with the avant-garde, his paintings reflected the style of his woodcuts, with flat areas of colour, hard edges, and simplification of detail. His subjects included genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Examples of his Nabi style 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.
In 1899 Vallotton married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, a wealthy young widow with three children, and in 1900 he attained French citizenship. Around 1899, his printmaking activity diminished as he concentrated on painting, developing a sober, often bitter realism independently of the artistic mainstream. His “Portrait of Gertrude Stein” (1907) was painted as an apparent response to Picasso’s portrait of the previous year, and in “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”, Stein described the very methodical way in which Vallotton painted it, working from top to bottom as if lowering a curtain across the canvas.
Vallotton’s paintings of the post-Nabi period found admirers, and were generally respected for their truthfulness and their technical qualities, but the severity of his style was frequently criticised. Typical is the reaction of the critic who, writing in the March 23, 1910 issue of Neue Zürcher Zeitung, complained that Vallotton “paints like a policeman, like someone whose job it is to catch forms and colors. Everything creaks with an intolerable dryness ... the colours lack all joyfulness.” In its uncompromising character his art prefigured the New Objectivity that flourished in Germany during the 1920s, and has a further parallel in the work of Edward Hopper.
He continued to publish occasional art criticism, in addition to other writings. He wrote eight plays, some of which received performances (in 1904 and 1907), although their reviews appear to have been unfavourable. He also wrote three novels, including the semi-autobiographical La Vie Meurtrière (The Murderous Life), begun in 1907 and published posthumously.
Vallotton responded in 1914 to the coming of the First World War by volunteering for the French army, but he was rejected because of his age. In 1915–16 he returned to the medium of woodcut for the first time since 1901 to express his feelings for his adopted country in the series, “This is War”, his last prints. He subsequently spent three weeks on a tour of the Champagne front in 1917, on a commission from the Ministry of Fine Arts. The sketches he produced became the basis for a group of paintings, “The Church of Souain in Silhouette” among them, in which he recorded with cool detachment the ruined landscape.
In his last years Félix Vallotton concentrated especially on still lifes and on “composite landscapes”, landscapes composed in the studio from memory and imagination. Always a prolific artist, by the end of his life he had completed over 1700 paintings and about 200 prints, in addition to hundreds of drawings and several sculptures. He died on the day after his 60th birthday, following cancer surgery in Paris in 1925. His brother Paul was an art dealer; he founded the Galerie Paul Vallotton in Lausanne in 1922, which continued operation for many years under the control of his descendants.
The painting above is “Felix Jasinski in His Printmaking Studio”, painted in 1887. Feliks Stanisław Jasiński (1862-1901) was a Polish painter and graphic artist. He moved he moved permanently to Paris in 1882 and enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he met Valotton. This is one of my favourite early works of Valotton…
I have occasionally compared the two portraits of Gertrude Stein, by Picasso (1905) and by Vallotton (1907). It would be interesting to know who Stein valued most... I am guessing her pet, Picasso. But Picasso was rough and impatient, so if we are interested more in truthfulness and technical qualities, I might have gone for Vallotton.
ReplyDeleteYour head must have the volume of EINSTEIN, always such foundated post!
ReplyDeleteA living dictionary, that you are, dear Nicholas!
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