Félix Vallotton Idylle au Bord du Gouffre by Christoph Becker

He usually depicted types rather than individuals, eschewed the expression of strong emotion, and 'fuse a graphic wit with an acerbic if not ironic humor'.

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 was influenced by post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and especially by the Japanese woodcut: a large exhibition of ukiyo-e prints had been presented at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1890, and Vallotton, like many artists of his era an enthusiast of Japonism, collected these prints. Vallotton emphasized outline and flat patterns, and generally eliminated the gradations and modeling traditionally produced by hatching. Vallotton's woodcut style was novel in its starkly reductive opposition of large masses of undifferentiated black and areas of unmodulated white.

In the western world, the relief print, in the form of commercial wood engraving, had long been utilized mainly as a means to accurately reproduce drawn or painted images and, latterly, photographs. The many woodcuts he produced during the 1890s were recognized as innovative, and established Vallotton as a leader in the revival of true woodcut as an artistic medium. In 1891 he executed his first woodcut, a portrait of Paul Verlaine. In 1885 he painted the Ingresque Portrait of Monsieur Ursenbach as well as his first painted self-portrait (seen at left), which received an honorable mention at the Salon des artistes français in 1886.ĭuring the following decade Vallotton painted, wrote art criticism and made a number of prints. Vallotton's earliest paintings, chiefly portraits, are firmly rooted in the academic tradition. 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. In that year he moved to Paris to study art under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger at the Académie Julian. 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. He was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut. Félix Edouard Vallotton (December 28, 1865 – December 29, 1925) was a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated with Les Nabis.

Félix Vallotton Idylle au Bord du Gouffre by Christoph Becker