1904, Felix Vallotton, The Green Room -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label: When Vallotton was eighteen, he moved from Switzerland to Paris. While a student at the Académie Julian, he befriended Vuillard and became directly associated with the Nabi movement in 1892. Early in his career as a printmaker and painter, Vallotton distinguished his work within the group by representing unsentimental scenes from modern Parisian life. His interest in interiors and the intimate dynamics of relationships began manifesting in 1898 in his woodblock prints and paintings made after photographs. In 1899, he married Gabrielle Bernheim, the daughter of a wealthy Parisian art dealer, and the couple moved into a spacious apartment in rue des Belles-Feuilles, in Paris's affluent 16th arrondissement. The Green Room situates the viewer within the living room of the apartment, providing a distant perspective of Gabrielle seated in the adjacent vestibule. Vallotton represents the three-dimensional space using a series of embedded rectangles that frame his wife's figure and confer exclusive attention upon her. Cleverly employing an economy of detail to shorten the depth of perspective, the artist renders Gabrielle's expression inscrutable. The viewer is left guessing what she may be contemplating or perhaps brooding over, an air of mystery that accords an introspective dimension to the scene.
1904, Felix Vallotton, The Green Room -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond)
From the museum label: When Vallotton was eighteen, he moved from Switzerland to Paris. While a student at the Académie Julian, he befriended Vuillard and became directly associated with the Nabi movement in 1892. Early in his career as a printmaker and painter, Vallotton distinguished his work within the group by representing unsentimental scenes from modern Parisian life. His interest in interiors and the intimate dynamics of relationships began manifesting in 1898 in his woodblock prints and paintings made after photographs. In 1899, he married Gabrielle Bernheim, the daughter of a wealthy Parisian art dealer, and the couple moved into a spacious apartment in rue des Belles-Feuilles, in Paris's affluent 16th arrondissement. The Green Room situates the viewer within the living room of the apartment, providing a distant perspective of Gabrielle seated in the adjacent vestibule. Vallotton represents the three-dimensional space using a series of embedded rectangles that frame his wife's figure and confer exclusive attention upon her. Cleverly employing an economy of detail to shorten the depth of perspective, the artist renders Gabrielle's expression inscrutable. The viewer is left guessing what she may be contemplating or perhaps brooding over, an air of mystery that accords an introspective dimension to the scene.