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 :. | Gabrielle Vallotton at her Dressing Table | clair de lune | Cagne Valley | The ball | Flood at Houlate |
Related Artists:
Francisco de herrera the elder
Spanish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1590-1656 Spanish painter. His early works are in the Mannerist style. Under the influence of Francisco Zurbaren, he developed the naturalistic style seen in his four scenes from the life of St. Bonaventure (1627). About 1650 he moved to Madrid. His last documented work, a painting of St. Joseph (1648) influenced by Anthony Van Dyck, features elongated forms and elaborate draperies. He achieved considerable fame in Sevilla, where Diego Velezquez was briefly his pupil. His work marked the transition from Mannerism to the Baroque. His son, Francisco Herrera the Younger
Floris van Dijck
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1575-1651 Dutch painter and draughtsman. He is thought to have been a pupil of Rembrandt in Amsterdam c. 1650. There is no documentary evidence for this, but his earliest dated painting, the Presentation in the Temple shows that he had certainly seen examples of Rembrandt work. He was an eclectic artist, given to following several models simultaneously. This is evident from two versions of Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath; one (1655-60; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst) is painted in horizontal format in the style of Barent Fabritius, while the other (1655-60; Milwaukee, WI, A. Bader priv. col., see Sumowski, 1983, no. 362) features large half-length figures in the manner of Nicolaes Maes. In another biblical scene, Benjamin and Judah (1655-60; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.), he followed the example of Rembrandt. His best works, such as Saying Grace (1655-60; Hannover, Nieders?chs. Landesmus.) and the Old Prophetess (1655-60; Leipzig, Mus. Bild. Kst), show old women either praying or sleeping and confirm that Maes was his main source of inspiration. Similar subjects are represented in the drawings attributed to him (e.g. Old Woman Seated, Holding a Book; New York, Pierpont Morgan Lib.). In the late 1650s van Dijck also seems to have been influenced by the genre paintings of Gabriel Metsu and above all by Quiringh van Brekelenkam, as in Hermit Praying in a Cave (late 1650s; St Petersburg, Hermitage) and Family Saying Grace (late 1650s; Stockholm, Nmus.).
Gerard van Spaendonck
(22 March 1746 - 11 May 1822) was a Dutch painter. Gerard was born in Tilburg, an older brother of Cornelis van Spaendonck (1756-1840), who was also a renowned artist. In the 1760s he studied with decorative painter Willem Jacob Herreyns (also known as Guillaume-Jacques Herreyns) (1743-1827) in Antwerp. In 1769 he moved to Paris, and in 1774 was appointed miniature painter in the court of Louis XVI. In 1780 he succeeded Madeleine Françoise Basseporte (1701-1780) as professor of floral painting at the Jardin des Plantes, and shortly afterwards was elected a member of the Academie des beaux-arts. Gerard van Spaendonck painted with both oil and watercolors. He contributed over fifty works to the Velins du Roi, which was a famous collection of botanical watercolors possessed by French royalty. From 1799 to 1801 he published twenty-four plates of his Fleurs Dessinees d'apres Nature (Flowers Drawn from Life), which were high-quality engravings for students of floral painting. Today, Fleurs Dessinees d'apres Nature is a highly treasured book on floral art. In 1788 Spaendonck was appointed adviser to the Academie, and in 1795 he became a founding member of the Institut de France. In 1804 he received the Legion d'honneur and soon afterwards was ennobled by Napoleon Bonaparte. He died in Paris.