Felix Vallotton

Félix Vallotton – Studies in Paris with Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre

Félix Vallotton was born in Lausanne on 28 December 1865. The son of a pharmacist and a housewife, he came from a bourgeois-Protestant background and grew up in modest circumstances. At the age of 17, he decided to study art and thus went to Paris where he enrolled at the Académie Julian and was taught by the Orientalist salon painter Gustave Boulanger and the portrait and nude specialist Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. Vallotton studied graphics, lithography and further printing techniques as well as painting during his course, and the artist Charles Maurin taught him the art of the woodcut. Vallotton first exhibited his work in 1885 at an exhibition in the Salon der Société des Artistes Français where his oil painting Portrait of Monsieur Ursenbach garnered positive attention. Around the same time, the artist started his personal catalogue raisonné, Livre de Raison, which he continued chronologically with great care until his death. 

Breakthrough with a scandal; innovator of the art of the woodcut

In the following years, Félix Vallotton participated in further exhibitions, including the first Exposition Nationale Suisse des Beaux-Arts in Bern and the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. The much-acclaimed presentation of his frivolous painting Das Bad created a social scandal, but also brought him a great reputation. In the 1890s, Vallotton concentrated his artistic activity on the creation of a series of woodcuts, which attracted a lot of attention due to their new type of surface division and strong contrasts. The works were published in well-known magazines such as Die Insel and La Revue blanche and laid the foundations for the excellent reputation which the artist enjoys to this day. In fact, Vallotton is considered the great innovator of the woodcut technique, a technique almost meaningless in his time, and which he developed further and sustainably revived through a deliberate reference to Japanese models. 

Member of the Nabis group; diverse artistic activity

In 1892, Félix Vallotton joined the progressive artist group Les Nabis, to which his artist friends Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis and Édouard Vuillard also belonged. In 1899, at the age of 30, Vallotton married Gabrielle Bernheim, the divorced daughter of the Parisian art dealer Alexandre Bernheim who owned the renowned Bernheim-Jeune Gallery. Shortly after, he acquired French citizenship and, as a respected member of the Parisian bourgeoisie, was able to dedicate himself entirely to painting. His preferred motifs were street scenes, homelife and especially female nudes. Landscapes also came later, and Normandy and the view of the sea in particular became a central theme. As well as many woodcuts, drawings and paintings, Vallotton also created sculptures and left behind a literary oeuvre that includes essays, plays, and even three novels. The artist had his first solo exhibition in Switzerland in 1910 – also ridden with scandal as the revealing nature of the images ensured the exclusion of underage visitors. 

Felix Vallotton died in Paris on 29 December 1925, one day before his 60th birthday, from the consequences of cancer treatment.