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 :. | Self-Portrait | Perseus Slays the Dragon | Still life with Anemones and Orange | Portrait decoratif of Hector Berlioz | Stillleben mit Selbstportrait |
Related Artists:
Jonas Akerstrom
Swedish, 1759-1795
Jacob van Loo
(1614 - 26 November 1670) was a Flemish painter who is considered one of the Dutch Masters of the 17th Century. Van Loo is known for his conversational groupings, his use of a subtle color palette and his nudes. He was the founder of the Van Loo family of painters. Van Loo was born in Sluis, Zeeland, in the Dutch Republic. Some sources have spe,culated that his father, Jan van Loo, may have been a notary, but more often his father is described as a painter from whom Jacob van Loo received his early training. Little is known of Van Loo's early history due to the destruction of the city archives in Sluis during World War II. His early influences included Thomas de Keyser and Jacob Adriaensz Backer. In 1642, van Loo moved to Amsterdam, where his contemporaries included Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Bartholomeus van der Helst. In 1643 he married the sister of the painter, Martinus Lengele. The couple had six children. They lived on Rozengracht in the Jordaan district of Amsterdam. Eglon van der Neer became one of his pupils. In 1660, Van Loo fled the city after fatally stabbing someone during an altercation at an inn. He was sentenced to death in absentia which forever prevented his return to Holland. Van Loo settled in Paris, where he was admitted to the Academie de peinture et de sculpture. He died in Paris in 1670. Van Loo's work was done in the Baroque style that had originated in Rome. The Baroque style was popular throughout Europe during this period. Van Loo was a major influence on Johannes Vermeer as can be seen in Vermeer's painting, Diana and Her Companions. Van Loo painted many portraits. Among his subjects were Johan Huydecoper van Maarssenveen; his sister, Leonara Huydecoper, who was married to Jan J. Hinlopen; Joan Ortt, who was later involved with Antoinette Bourignon; and his wife. Jacob van Loo's son, Louis Abraham van Loo, was also a painter, as were his grandsons, Jean-Baptiste van Loo and Charles-Andra van Loo.
Jacobus Theodorus Abels
1803-1866