I know I usually see at least a few things I want to “borrow” whenever I look at it. Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne. I had a hard time stopping when I was adding images for this post. Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet By Louis Block Félix Vallotton, Self-Portrait at the Age of 20, 1885. Tony Awards 2023 What to Watch: The 15 Best New Movies and TV Shows From April. I just wanted to make folks just a tiny bit more aware of his work. ‘Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet’ Review: Beautiful Contradictions. It traces his career from his association with Les Nabis, the painting group heavily influenced by Paul Gauguin and Cezanne, through his woodblock prints and his later paintings that became more like his prints, compositionally. Well, whatever the case, perhaps we will soon know a bit more about this artist as the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a large exhibit of his work, Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet, opening late in October and running through the end of January in 2020. Maybe his lack of of recognition came from the fact that he didn’t seek the spotlight personally or write much on his work. His print series, Intimacies, from which I show a few below, is a fascinating group that I have learned was highly influential on the paintings of Edward Hopper and the films of Alfred Hitchcock. It is most distinctive work, in many ways bolder and different than that of his peers.

But looking at his work, both as a painter and a printmaker, makes me wonder why this was the case.

I loved the way he blocked in the forms in his compositions, very much in a manner that I could identify with in my own work.īut his name didn’t bring instant recognition for me, not like the big names from his contemporaries from that incredible time of change for the art world around the turn of the last century. I never really knew much about the Swiss born painter Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) but I always found myself stopping whenever I came across one of his paintings, particularly those that were in the vein of the painting above, Evening on the Loire, from 1923.

Felix vallotton painter of disquiet