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 :. | The Beach at Honfleur | Woman in a Black Hat | Waiting | Still life with Ham and Tomatoes | The Slaying of Orpheus |
Related Artists:
jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin
1699-1779 was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life.Chardin was born in Paris, the son of a cabinetmaker, and rarely left the city. He lived on the Left Bank near Saint-Sulpice until 1757, when Louis XV granted him a studio and living quarters in the Louvre.Chardin entered into a marriage contract with Marguerite Saintard in 1723, whom he did not marry until 1731.He served apprenticeships with the history painters Pierre-Jacques Cazes and Noël-Nicholas Coypel, and in 1724 became a master in the Academie de Saint-Luc. Upon presentation of The Ray in 1728, he was admitted to the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. The following year he ceded his position in the Academie de Saint-Luc. In November of 1731 his son Jean-Pierre was baptized, and a daughter, Marguerite-Agn's, was baptized in 1733. In 1735 his wife Marguerite died, and within two years Marguerite-Agn's had died as well.Beginning in 1737 Chardin exhibited regularly at the Salon. He would prove to be a 'dedicated academician', regularly attending meetings for fifty years, and functioning successively as counsellor, treasurer, and secretary, overseeing in 1761 the installation of Salon exhibitions. In 1744 he entered his second marriage, this time to Françoise-Marguerite Pouget. The following year a daughter, Angelique-Françoise, was born, but she died in 1746. In 1752 Chardin was granted a pension of 500 livres by Louis XV. At the Salon of 1759 he exhibited nine paintings; it was the first Salon to be commented upon by Denis Diderot, who would prove to be a great admirer and public champion of Chardin's work.Beginning in 1761, his responsibilities on behalf of the Salon, simultaneously arranging the exhibitions and acting as treasurer, resulted in a diminution of productivity in painting, and the showing of 'replicas' of previous works.In 1763 his services to the Academie were acknowledged with an extra 200 livres in pension. In 1765 he was unanimously elected associate member of the Academie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts of Rouen, but there is no evidence that he left Paris to accept the honor.By 1770 Chardin was the 'Premiere peintre du roi', and his pension of 1,400 livres was the highest in the Academy.In 1772 Chardin's son,
Ludwig Hans Fischer
Austrian , 1848 - 1915 )
Johann Georg Meyer
Johann Georg Meyer (28 October 1813 Bremen, Germany - 4 December 1886 Berlin), commonly known as Meyer von Bremen, was a German painter who specialized in Biblical, peasant, and family scenes. In his 2lst year, he went to Desseldorf and began his studies at the Academy of Art there, which was led by Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow, the son of sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow. In 1841, Meyer opened a studio of his own, but moved to Berlin as his fame increased (1853). While scenes from the Bible were first the subjects of his brush, he later turned his attention to incidents from popular life, especially among the Hessian peasantry, and finally to the portrayal of family life in its pathetic aspect. Such pictures as eThe Jubilee of a Hessian Pastore (1843), hristmas Eve,e eBlindman's Buff,e eThe Soldier's Return,e eThe Inundatione (1846), eThe Repentant Daughtere (1852, in the gallery at Bremen), are full of intense sympathy with the esimple annals of the poor.e After taking up his residence at Berlin, he chose especially scenes from child life, which he rendered with spirited humor. Among his pictures of this kind are eThe Fairy Tale,ehildren Playing Blindman's Buff,e eGrandfather and Grandchild,e and others. A third group of his pictures includes those of young women, as single figures or in groups, such as eThe Tryste and eThe Love Letter.e An example of his work, eThe Lettere (1873), is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.