Cultural exhibition Félix Vallotton, A Swiss private collection

The Swiss auction house Beurret & Bailly Auktionen Galerie Widmer, in partnership with Artcurial, will exhibit from 21^st to 24^th February at the Hôtel Marcel Dassault, 11 artworks by the artist Félix Vallotton, from a single collection. This set will be auctioned by the Swiss auction house during its Swiss Art and International Art before 1900 sale on 22^nd March in Basel.

Félix Vallotton (1865-1925)
Baigneuse grise, 1909
116 × 81 cm

Félix Vallotton, Swiss master (1865-1925)
At less than thirty years old, Félix Vallotton became famous as a wood engraver and illustrator. Today, he is one of the few Swiss painters of his generation to enjoy international renown. The past decade has proven this with retrospectives held in such prestigious institutions as the Grand Palais in Paris, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Royal Academy in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The simultaneous sale of fourteen of his works from a single Swiss private collection constitutes a very special event.

Artworks in the spotlight
This set of artworks from the collection, assembled in the space of some ten years, focuses on the artist's period after 1909, the so-called mature period. It is represented in the collection by Vallotton's three favorite genres: the figure, the still life and the landscape.

Will be exhibited in Paris in particular, La Baigneuse grise, from 1909. This work is emblematic of the influence of Ingres, to whom Félix Vallotton openly claimed to belong, and which is evident in most of the female nudes lined up from 1906 onwards, alternating with highly stylized portraits of women, or portraits that are glaringly true.

Félix Vallotton (1865-1925)
Nature morte à l'assiette bleue, 1922
53,5 × 72,5 cm

The importance of realism can also be seen in Vallotton's still lifes, as seen in the work entitled Nature morte à l'assiette bleue. An artwork, characteristic of the efflorescence of the genre in the production of the artist around 1920, with a staging of objects charged with symbolism.

Finally, the three landscapes exhibited in the collection belong to the genre of "composed landscapes", according to Félix Vallotton's own term. That is, they were painted from memory in the studio according to small pencil sketches drawn on the spot, in this case in Perugia and around Cagnes. A working method which left all freedom to the artist in the establishment of the pattern and the interpretation of the colors.

Félix Vallotton (1865-1925)
L'escalier du couvent San Marco, Pérouse,1913

It is remarkable to be able to present in the same sale two of the eight paintings of Perugia executed by the artist, including L'escalier du couvent San Marco. Of all the paintings in this series, L'escalier is certainly the most iconic and famous. The perspective is very marked and particularly striking, Félix Vallotton emphasizes here a very contrasting play of shadows and lights.

More intimate, the earlier period of the artist's work is not absent from the collection. It includes in particular a Swiss landscape entitled Souvenir de Romanel, in memory of the Château de La Naz, near Lausanne, where the artist stayed with his family throughout the summer of 1900 and where he was visited by several Parisian friends, including Édouard Vuillard. The work Femme lisant à la fenêtre recalls other holidays, those of the summer of 1904 spent in Normandy, in Varengeville.

Information
Public exhibition at Artcurial
From 21^st to 24^th February
From 11am to 6pm

Auction in Basel
Swiss Art and International Art before 1900
Tuesday 22^nd March

Schwarzwaldallee 171
4058 Basel

Contact Artcurial
Elodie Landais
Tél. +33 1 42 99 20 84