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 Kiss | The Visit | The Wind | The Beach Promenade in Etretat | The Ray |
Related Artists:
Hitchcock, George
American Painter, 1850-1913 American painter, active in the Netherlands. A descendant of Roger Williams (the founder of Rhode Island), he practised law for several years in New York before deciding in 1879 to become an artist. He studied in Paris with Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre, in D?sseldorf, and in The Hague with H. W. Mesdag. He settled in Egmond-aan-Zee, near Alkmaar, in 1883, and was soon widely known for his paintings of religious subjects in contemporary settings and of sunlit views of tulip fields. He returned to the USA only occasionally in later years. Hitchcock's style, similar to Impressionism, has been appreciated more in Europe than in the USA. A good example of his style is the Blessed Mother (1892; Cleveland, OH, Mus. A.). He received some recognition in the USA, such as election to associate membership in the National Academy of Design, New York,
Ivar Arosenius
Swedish, 1878-1909
Abraham Wuchters
Abraham Wuchters (1608 - 23 May 1682) was a Dutch-Danish painter and engraver. He was born in Antwerp but had most of his career in Denmark where he, along with Karel van Mander III, was the preferred painter of the Danish King, nobility and Bourgeoisie during his day, together they represent the main influence from the Dutch Golden Age on Danish Baroque art. Wuchters was born in Antwerp in 1608. He arrived in Denmark in 1638 and was, the following year, employed as sketching master at Sorø Academy. Around the same time, he was summoned to Copenhagen where he painted several portraits of King Christian IV. In 1645 he returned to Copenhagen Castle to portray the King's children, including lrik Christian Gyldenløve (c. 1645, Danish National Gallery) and Duke Frederik (III) (c. 1645, Amalienborg Palace). In two periods, between 1658 and 1662, he worked at the Royal Swedish Court in Stockholm where he portrayed Queen Consort Christina (1660, Uppsala University and 1661, Stockholm Castle), Charles X Gustav and Hedvig Eleonora. Back in Denmark, Wuchters was engaged by Frederick III, who had instituted Denmark as an absolute monarchy in 1660, with responsibility for the maintenance of his paintings. n 1671 the new king, Christian V, appointed him as official Painter to the Danish Coirt and in 1873 he was also made official Engraver to the Danish Court. It was, therefore, he alone who decided how the face of the absolutist King was to be represented.