Vallotton is justly credited with the revival of woodblock printmaking in Europe in the final decade of the nineteenth century. His distinctive graphic language and wry humor brought countless commissions, especially in the liberal Parisian press, and he contributed hundreds of illustrations to literary journals and fine arts portfolios. This gallery presents a broad range of the artist's highly original prints, which earned him the title "the very singular Vallotton."

In 1891 Vallotton began making woodcuts, a practice that brought him recognition and a steady income throughout the decade. Inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, which were popular in Paris at the time, Vallotton produced sharply reductive imagery by using undifferentiated jet black against passages of pristine white. Many of these works capture vignettes of daily life, while others vividly expose the unsavory underside of the city: the police are rebuked; innocent bystanders fall victim to carriage accidents; suicides multiply. Vallotton's satirical prints owe much to the vibrant, alternative culture that flourished in the cafés and cabarets he frequented around Montmartre.

Woodcut printmaking is a relief process in which designs are carved into a wooden block. The raised areas are inked and printed while the recessed areas are left blank. Like Japanese artists, Vallotton cut his blocks lengthwise along the grain of the wood. He is also credited with reviving the white-line technique, a process in which the block is first saturated in black ink and then white lines are carved into the inked surface.

Although Vallotton gave up printmaking in the early years of the twentieth century, he produced as many as two hundred fifty prints in the 1890s, solidifying a graphic legacy that we still celebrate today.

Vallotton moved to Paris at the age of sixteen, trading the conservatism of Swiss culture for a vibrant modern city. Like many expatriate artists, he studied at the Académie Julian and copied the old masters at the Louvre. His paintings of this early period demonstrate a precocious talent rooted in the Northern European realist tradition and reflect an admiration for the Renaissance masters Hans Holbein the Younger and Albrecht Dürer, as well as Dutch artists of the seventeenth century.

Vallotton published widely in the French press in the early years of the 1890s, as his printmaking career flourished. A frequent contributor to the influential journal La Revue blanche, he came to know the Parisian avant-garde and artists of the Nabi circle. Somewhat of a loner in his early years, Vallotton welcomed the camaraderie of the Nabi artists, especially Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. Although Vallotton was fundamentally a realist painter, for a time he embraced the Nabis' rejection of naturalism in favor of bold, flat forms and a subjective application of color to express emotion.

Several of Vallotton's arresting portraits record his friendships while working for La Revue blanche. The alluring Misia (Godebska) Natanson sat for him, as did her husband Thadée Natanson, one of the journal's founders.

Félix Vallotton (Swiss, 1865–1925). The Cook (La cuisinière) (detail), 1892. Oil on wood panel, 13 x 16 1/8 in. (33 x 41 cm). Collection of Marlene and Spencer Hays. Image © Juan Trujillo

The tragic violence of a patch of black . . .

—Thadée Natanson, cofounder of La Revue blanche

Vallotton's series of ten woodcuts entitled Intimités is his most celebrated graphic undertaking. Published in the journal La Revue blanche in 1898 in an edition of thirty, the woodblocks were later destroyed to prevent the printing of any further editions. The unusual cancellation proof, shown nearby, illustrates a detail cut from each of the destroyed blocks.

In Intimités, Vallotton explores the subtle power dynamics between romantic partners and unmasks the hypocrisies of bourgeois life. Lies, deceit, and subterfuges pervade these unsettling narratives. Married couples quarrel; an adulterous pair toast a deceived spouse; a man weeps while his partner spares no sympathy. In another work suggestively titled Money, the daring expanse of black fuses the silhouette of the man with the room itself and blindly throws into relief the ambiguous transaction between protagonists. Throughout the series, the radical simplicity of Vallotton's calligraphic line belies the sophistication of his sharp critique.

Vallotton followed this provocative print series with several paintings exploring the same themes. Three are on view in this gallery.

Félix Vallotton (Swiss, 1865–1925). The Lie (Le mensonge) (detail), 1897. Oil on cardboard, 9 7/16 x 13 1/8 in. (24 x 33.3 cm). The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland, BMA (1950.298). Image © Mitro Hood

Landscape painting saw increasing prominence in Vallotton's art, especially as his marriage to Gabrielle afforded summers in Normandy. The invention of the Kodak camera further encouraged outdoor subjects. Vallotton typically took snapshots of appealing imagery and then crafted his paintings in the studio.

Vallotton called his later landscapes paysages composés (composed landscapes). "I dream of a painting free from any literal respect for nature," he wrote in 1916. "I would like to be able to recreate landscapes only with the help of the emotion they have provoked in me." Indeed, he sketched his landscapes on-site and then painted from imagination. Using this process, he could simplify compositions into broad zones of intensified color—a structure that recalls the flat designs of his earlier woodcuts. The resulting abstractions of nature give his landscapes their distinctive character, most notably in the vivid sunsets he painted in Honfleur. Other compositions in this gallery are infused with an eerie stillness.

A similar detachment is found in his still lifes, the subjects of which often carry metaphoric value. For example, in Red Peppers (1915), the blood on the dinner knife alludes to the First World War and Vallotton's strongly felt nationalism as a relatively new French citizen.

Félix Vallotton (Swiss, 1865–1925). The Ball (Le ballon) (detail), 1899. Oil and gouache on cardboard, 18 7/8 x 24 in. (48 x 61 cm). Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Bequest of Carle Dreyfus, 1953. Image © RMN-Grand Plais

Marriage to Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, the wealthy daughter of a prominent Paris art merchant, changed Vallotton's life forever. Now financially secure, he could fully devote himself to painting. Gabrielle, a widow, modeled for many of his interiors, as did her children. It was not one big happy family; rather, the childless artist found his new role as stepfather challenging. He captured the tension-filled family dynamic in several haunting paintings in this gallery.

Though he occasionally returned to earlier themes, such as the illicit assignation, subversive wit largely disappeared from Vallotton's work after 1900. Instead, the female nude became Vallotton's primary subject. Painting the nude brought Vallotton his greatest satisfaction, and it was with these pictures that he hoped to make his mark at the Salon, the annual state-sponsored exhibition in Paris. Ever the detached observer, Vallotton relied on a single sketch of his model drawn from life, and then in the studio he painted his subject with impeccable contours and flawless surfaces.

Félix Vallotton (Swiss, 1865–1925). Box Seats at the Theater, the Gentleman and the Lady (La loge de Théâtre, le Monsieur et la Dame) (detail), 1909. Oil on canvas, 18 3/16 x 15 in. (46.2 x 38.1 cm). Private Collection. Photo © Fondation Félix Vallotton, Lausanne