Background
Vallotton was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, on December 28, 1865, to a conservative middle-class parents. He was the son of Adrien François Armand Vallotton and Louise Vallotton.
1899
Ker-Xavier Roussel, Édouard Vuillard, Romain Coolus, and Félix Vallotton.
Vallotton was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, on December 28, 1865, to a conservative middle-class parents. He was the son of Adrien François Armand Vallotton and Louise Vallotton.
Félix Vallotton completed secondary school in 1882. The same year, he left for Paris to pursue art studies. Though he was accepted by the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Vallotton chose to attend the less traditional Académie Julian (now part of ESAG Penninghen). There he studied art under the guidance of Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger and enjoyed virtually free rein over his pursuits.
While in Paris, Vallotton spent many hours in the Louvre, and he was greatly inspired by the artworks of Holbein, Dürer and Ingres, artists who would remain the main exemplars for Vallotton throughout his life. In addition, he took the opportunity to study graphic arts - lithography and other methods of printmaking.
Vallotton exhibited publicly for the first time in 1885 at the Salon des Artistes Français presenting the oil painting, Portrait of Monsieur Ursenbach, as well as his first created self-portrait, which received an honourable mention at the Salon in 1886. In 1889 Félix Vallotton exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris as the representative from Switzerland and won an honourable mention for the same portrait.
In the following decade, Félix Vallotton painted, wrote art criticism, and produced a number of prints. Vallotton was a friend and protégè of artist and printmaker Charles Maurin, who introduced him to the art of woodcut. Maurin also introduced Vallotton to the haunts of Montmartre, such cafés and cabarets as Le Chat Noir, where he met artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. To make ends meet, the artist started to sell prints of drawings he had made after Rembrandt and Jean-François Millet. In 1890 he also contributed art reviews to the Gazette de Lausanne, he continued to write until 1897.
In 1891 he created his first woodcut, a portrait of Paul Verlaine. The numerous woodcuts Vallotton executed during the 1890s were considered innovative and unique, and established him as a leader in the revival of true woodcut as an artistic medium. In 1892 he joined the group of artists called the Nabis (from Hebrew "navi", meaning “prophet,” or “seer”). Among its members were Édouard Vuillard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Pierre Bonnard, and Maurice Denis, with whom Vallotton had a lifelong friendship. The same year Vallotton exhibited with them for the first time at Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
In his oeuvre, the artist was highly influenced by Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and especially by the Japanese woodcut. A large exhibition of ukiyo-e prints was held at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1890, and Vallotton, who was like many artists of his era an enthusiast of Japonism, collected these prints. Of all the paintings he created in the early 1890s, Bathers on a Summer Evening (1892-1893) attracted the particular attention. It was a large-scale composition of women of various ages and in various stages of undress. The work was displayed at the Salon des Indépendants in spring 1893, and it shocked the crowds with its eroticism.
Félix Vallotton's woodcut subjects comprised of domestic scenes, portrait heads, bathing women, as well as several images of street crowds and demonstrations, in particular, several scenes of police attacking anarchists. Vallotton in most cases depicted types rather than individuals and avoided the expression of strong emotion, and "fused a graphic wit with an acerbic if not ironic humour."
During the 1890s, when Vallotton was closely connected with the avant-garde. His artworks reflected the style of his woodcuts, with flat areas of colour, hard edges, and simplification of detail. Among his subjects were genre scenes, portraits and nudes. Example of his Nabi style is the symbolist Moonlight (1895).
Félix Vallotton's graphic art reached its highest development in Intimités (Intimacies), the best-known series of ten interiors published in the Revue Blanche in 1898, which depicted the tension between men and women. Vallotton's woodcuts were widely published in periodicals and books not only in Europe but also in the United States.
He designed a theatre playbook cover for Swedish dramatist August Strindberg’s The Father (1894) and produced illustrations for several books throughout the 1890s. For instance, he created illustrations for Jules Renard’s The Mistress and Remy de Gourmont’s The Book of Masks (both 1896).
Around 1899 Vallotton's printmaking activity diminished as he focused on oil painting, developing a kind of bitter realism independently of the artistic mainstream. He produced many nudes, as well as landscapes, still-life paintings, interiors, and portraits. They all were painted in a simplified realist manner that was likened to that of Gustave Courbet and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres.
Vallotton created numerous portraits of members of the Paris cultural elite, including Félix Fénéon (1896), Thadée Natanson (1897), Gaston and Josse Bernheim-Jeune (1901), and Gertrude Stein (1907), and the very large The Five Painters (1902-1903), a group portrait of Nabi artists Charles Cottet, Bonnard, Vuillard, Roussel, and Vallotton engaged in conversation around a desk. Around 1907 Félix Vallotton was also trying to write, working on a novel that year (La Vie meurtrière, published posthumously in 1930; [The Murderous Life]) as well as several unpublished plays over the course of several years.
Throughout the 1910s Félix Vallotton exhibited his artworks regularly. Vallotton responded to the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 by volunteering for the French army, however, he was rejected because of his age. After nearly 15 years, he decided to return to woodcut to produce the antiwar series C’est la guerre! (1915; [This is War!]), his last prints. Increasingly consumed with the hostilities of World War I, in late 1916 Vallotton joined a group of artists who visited the front lines and witnessed the drama of war in person. Several artworks emerged from that experience, including his Ruins at Souain and Verdun, both created in 1917. He also published the essay "Art et Guerre," (1917; "Art and War") in Les Écrits nouveaux, in which he described the challenges of conveying the realities of war through art.
The last 10 years of Félix Vallotton’s career were less successful. The artist had serious problems with his health, nevertheless, he continued to make art until his death.
Washerwomen at Etretat
(Women Drying Laundry on the Beach)
A Street
(Also known as Street Corner.)
Passerby
(Also known as Street Scene.)
Portrait of French poet Pierre Quillard
Portrait of Belgian writer George Eekhoud
The Waltz
Portrait of Berlioz
Portrait of French poet Albert Samain
The Bath, Summer Evening
The Artist's Mother
Portrait of French writer Victor Charbonnel
Portrait of French writer Louis Dumur
The Poker Game
Portrait of French writer André Fontainas
Portrait of French writer Camille Mauclair
Russian political writer Alexander Herzen
Portrait of communard Raoul Rigault
Portrait of French writer Jules Renard
Woman with a Plumed Hat
Intimacy Couple in Interior
The Way to Locquirec
At the Market
Woman aiu being capped Bath
Portrait of French writer Stendhal
French writer Alexandre Dumas
The Ball
Portrait of French poet le Comte de Lautréamont
Portrait of French writer Henry Bataille
Gossip
Portrait of French writer Joris Karl Huysmans
Woman being capped
Gaveau
Mont Blanc
Portrait of French writer Paul Claudel
Outskirts of Lausanne
Moonlight
French writer Honoré de Balzac
Portrait of French writer Victor Barrucand
The brawl at the scene or cafe
Portrait of French writer Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
The Garden of Luxembourg
Portrait of French poet Jehan Rictus
The Source
Mont Blanc
On the Beach
Portrait of French writer Stendhal
Portrait of French poet Tristan Corbière
English demographer and political economist Thomas Malthus
Women at Their Toilet Femmes leur toilette
Autumn Crocuses
Naked women to cats
Portrait of French pacifist and esperantist Gaston Moch
The Port of Marseille
Self-portrait
Portrait of Jean Ajalbert
French poet Paul Verlaine from Le Livre des masques
French writer Henry Gauthier Villars (aka Willy)
Portrait of Thadee Nathanson
Portrait of Danish writer Peter Nansen
Portrait of French general and politician Joseph Vinoy
My portrait
Fyodor Dostojevsky
The pier of Honfleur
Interior, Vestibule by Lamplight
Poster Ah La Pé...la Pé...La Pepinière
British designer and writer William Morris
Portrait of French writer Octave Uzanne
Paul Verlaine
Portrait of French writer Marcel Boulenger
Portrait of the Artist's Brother with Hat
The Port of Pully
The Anarchist
The Matterhorn (Matterhorn)
Portrait of French writer and poet Adolphe Retté
The Five Painters: Bonnard, Vuillard, Roussel, Cottet and Vallotton
Portrait of communard Auguste Vermorel
Felix Feneon at the Revue Blanche
The Pont Neuf
Portrait of French writer Francis Jammes
The compelling reason
Red Sand and Snow
Portrait of Belgian poet Émile Verhaeren
The Laundress, Blue Room
Bulgarian Prime Minister Stefan Stambolov
Portrait of Fortuné Henry
Bathing in Etretat
Portrait of French writer Paul Adam
The Visit
Portrait of French writer André Gide
Woman with maid bathing
French painter Camille Pissarro
Portrait of communard Eugène Varlin
Portrait of French writer Francis Poictevin
Portrait of French poet Francis Vielé Griffin
Portrait of French poet Gustave Kahn
Portrait of French writer Ernest Hello
Universal suffrage
Portrait of Belgian symbolist poet Max Elskamp
Glacier
Portrait of French writer Maurice Barrès
Portrait of French writer Alfred Vallette
Interior Red Room with Woman and Child
The Beautiful Sunday
Portuguese poet João de Deus
Portrait of French writer René Ghil
Portrait of Juliette Lacour (model)
Jungfrau
Portrait of Zola
The Good market (Triptych)
Night
Félix Stanislas Jasinski
Gabrielle Vallotton at the Piano
Russian anarchist and philosopher Mikhail Bakunin
The Fourteenth of July at Etretat
The Patient
Portrait of French writer Léon Bloy
Portrait of Arthur Rimbaud
Interior, Bedroom with Two Figures
Portrait of Pierre Louÿs
Interior with Woman in Pink
Portrait of French writer Albert Aurier
In The Street Woman with Muff
Portrait of Jean Moréas
The Dinner, effect of lamp
The Manifistation
Portrait of American (French language) poet Stuart Merrill
French art historian Louis Coujarod
Edgar Allan Poe
Paul Vallotton, the Artist's Brother
Portrait of Verlaine
Self-portrait
Henri d'Artois
The Laundress
Private Conversation
Luxembourg Garden
Portrait of French writer Rachilde
Portrait of Matilde Serao
Seated Female Nude
The Bistro
French poet Paul Verlaine
Portrait of workshop with figure (my wife)
Self-portrait
Misia at Her Dressing Table
Portrait of French poet Saint-Pol-Roux
Portrait of French writer Hugues Rebell
Portrait of French politician Léon Blum
Portrait of French writer André Ferdinand Herold
Portrait of French writer and playwright Alfred Jarry
Portrait of Belgian writer, poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck
The Third Gallery at The Theatre
Nude at the Stove
British poet Alfred Douglas
Otto von Bismarck
Leo Tolstoy
Portrait of French writer Henri Mazel
Portrait of Dutch writer Multatuli
Portuguese writer and poet Eugénio de Castro
Cloud at Romanel
Portrait of French writers Jules et Edmond de Goncourt
Italian poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi
French writer Joseph de Maistre
Laid down woman, sleeping
Portrait of Henry David Thoreau
Portrait of Russian writer Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko
Portrait of French painter Léon Pourtau
The Lake Lema, effect of the evening
Family
Portrait of Russian philosopher Nikolai Konstantinovich Mikhailovsky
Portrait of Baudelaire
My portrait
Polish philosopher Józef Hoene Wroński
Portrait of French writer and poet Henri de Régnier
Street Scene
Felix Jasinski in His Printmaking Studio
Breithorn
Portrait of French writer Paul Fort
Madame Felix Vallotton at Her Dressing Table
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
The Lake Leman, effect of the evening
Portrait of Edouard Vuillard
Portrait of French poet Jules Laforgue
The Coal Scuttles
Portrait of French writer Félix Fénéon
Portrait of English writer and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley
The port of Pully (study)
Portrait of French poet Éphraïm Mikhaël
Portrait of French writer Édouard Dujardin
Portrait of French writer Jean Lorrain
Naked Women Playing Checkers
Woman Reading to a Little Girl
Woman Searching through a Cupboard
The Kiss
Portrait of French philosopher and historian Hippolyte Taine
The Artist's Parents
Mme. Felix Vallotton
Portrait of French poet Laurent Tailhade
Street Scene
Portrait of French poet and dandy Robert de Montesquiou
Portrait of French bishop Georges Darboy
The Lie
During the 1890s Félix Vallotton also became politically engaged. He usually used his oeuvre to express his sentiments. These prints were usually published in such Paris's literary and political publications as Le Rire, L’Assiette au beurre, Le Revue blanche, and Le Courrier français, as well as in Pan (Berlin), Die Jugend (Munich), and the U.S. publications Scribner’s and The Chap-Book.
Vallotton supported Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish artillery officer, at the time of the Dreyfus affair in 1894. His adherence he expressed in his woodcut The Age of Paper (1898), published on the January cover of Le Cri de Paris. It showed figures reading newspapers, all of which are Parisian publications known to be pro-Dreyfus.
Quotations:
"I think I paint for people who are level-headed but who have an unspoken vice deep inside them. I actually like this state which I share."
"The life I live is literally the opposite of the life I dreamed of. I love seclusion, silence, cultivated thinking and reasoned action - and I have to deal with machinations, foolish talk and vain affectation."
Vallotton became a naturalized French citizen in 1900.
Félix Vallotton married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, a wealthy young widow with three children, Max, Joseph Jacques, Madeleine Rodrigues Henriques, in 1899. Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques was the daughter of art dealer Alexandre Bernheim. This marriage not only landed Vallotton back in the bourgeois world in which he had been raised, but it also had a positive effect on his career, as he was given many opportunities to exhibit at his father-in-law’s Galerie Bernheim-Jeune.
Vallotton had a niece Annie Vallotton, who also was an artist and was known for her illustrations in the Good News Bible.