Felix Vallotton: Landscapes
Felix Vallotton [1865–1925] was Born in Switzerland. He was more than just a painter and printmaker. In fact, the artist also wrote three novels and eight plays, designed stage sets, took photographs and made sculpture. In his best-known novel, La vie meutrière (The Murderous Life), the protagonist, Jacques Verdier, is possessed of a power which causes everyone in his path to die in a tragic accident. Vallotton illustrated the novel himself in the darkly humorous style also found in standalone prints such as The Murder. Vallotton’s friend Vuillard co-founded a theatre company called the Théâtre de l’Œuvre in 1893, for which the Nabi group produced designs for sets and programmes. Vallotton was later inspired to try his own hand as a playwright, and in 1904 his play Un Homme très fort (A Very Strong Man) was performed at the Théâtre de Grand Guignol in Paris. In 1899, Vallotton acquired a Kodak camera and began to take snapshots of his surroundings: summer holidays, domestic scenes and visits to friends. He began to use these aides-mémoires for his paintings, working from them in the studio and manipulating the compositions, creating strange, fictionalised versions of reality. He also experimented with sculpture for a brief period, producing a small number of bronze nudes in 1904. [source]
