1865-1925was a Swiss 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 College 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 Academie Julian. He spent many hours in the Louvre, where he greatly admired the works of Holbein, Derer and Ingres; these artists would remain exemplars for Vallotton throughout his life.[1] His earliest paintings, such as the Ingresque Portrait of Monsieur Ursenbach (1885), are firmly rooted in the academic tradition, and his self portrait of 1885 (seen at right) received an honorable 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 widely disseminated in periodicals and books in Europe as well as in the United States, and were recognized as radically innovative in printmaking. They 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 mainly utilized unimaginatively as a medium for the reproduction of drawn or painted images and, latterly, photographs. Vallotton's starkly reductive woodcut style features large masses of undifferentiated black and areas of unmodulated white. While emphasizing outline and flat patterns, Vallotton generally made no use of the gradations and modeling traditionally produced by hatching. The influences of post-Impressionism, symbolism and the Japanese woodcut are apparent; 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. He depicted street crowds and demonstrations including several scenes of police attacking anarchists bathing women, portrait heads, and other subjects which he treated with a sardonic humor. His graphic art reached its highest development in Intimit's (Intimacies), a series of ten interiors published in 1898 by the Revue Blanche, which deal with tension between men and women. Vallotton's prints 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 Edouard 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 color, hard edges, and simplification of detail.  Related Paintings of Felix Vallotton :. | Portrait decoratif of Victor Hugo | Nude Seated in a red armchair | The Poker Game | Waiting | view of a paris street |
Related Artists:
Giovanni Stanchi
Italian, 1608-died after 1673
Julius Grun
Julius Gren (1823-1896)Aliases: Gustav Julius GrenProfessions: Porträtmaler; Genre Painter; Historical-scenes painter.
Richard Paton
was a British marine painter. Paton spent his artistic career in London, where he is said to have been born, although no record of his birthplace or parentage is known. He is said to have grown up in poverty, and he is described as "self-taught". Some critics have discerned an influence of Samuel Scott's works, and also of Charles Brooking. Any such influence is hardly evident. According to an account by Harry Parker, in "The Mariner's Mirror", March 1912, p 85, while Paton was begging "on Tower Hill, he attracted the attention of Admiral Sir Charles Knowles (died 1777), who happened to be passing that way, and who, taking a fancy to the boy, offered to take him to sea". He was assistant to the shipes painter on Knowles' ship, gaining knowledge in both painting and seamanship. In 1742, he started working at the Excise Office. His first exhibition was in 1758 on the premises of the London-based Society of Artists, where he continued to exhibit up to 1770. The Royal Academy hosted his works between 1762 and 1780. Paton's specialities were marine and naval paintings. He painted naval actions of wars ongoing at the time of painting such as the Seven Years War of 1756-1763 and later The American Revolutionary War, as well as earlier events such as the battles of the War of the Quadruple Alliance which took place when he was a baby. The paintings include many dramatic effects such as battles at night, the shooting of cannons and the effect of bombardments. There are, however, also less militant themes such as ships becalmed. His "sublime depiction of the sky" was considered especially noteworthy. Prints of his works, made among others by Pierre-Charles Canot, made them widely known.