Félix Vallotton, The Flute

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Date: 1896-97
Technique: Woodcut, 22.3 x 18 cm

One of six woodcuts published under the title Instruments de Musique.

Félix Vallotton, Edgar Allan Poe

Date: 1895
Technique: Unknown

From La Revue blanche (1er semestre 1895)

Félix Vallotton, The Church of Souain, Silhouetted (L'église de Souain en silhouette)

National Gallery of Art, Washington

Date: 1917
Technique: Oil on canvas, 97 x 130 cm

Vallotton pushed his own experiment to the limit. Using sketches drawn in Champagne, with characteristic attention to detail, he painted a landscape of ruins in gentle graduations of late afternoon light. The light slides over crumbled walls and the ribs of a vault indicating that a church once stood here. Flowers have blossomed among the rubble and the overturned tiles, whilst the trees stand straight against the clear sky in the background. The colours are in perfect harmony, the style is delicately Japanese and the composition highlighted with alternating bands of colour. None of this corresponds to the subject. Vallotton is aware of this and plays on this contradiction as far as he can so as to expose the destruction of man by man in all its absurdity while unchanging nature carries on undisturbed. During the time spent in the Champagne and Argonne regions and on his return to Paris, Vallotton repeatedly sought to exploit this sharp contrast to draw out its expressive potential. He remained unconvinced by the result, and later experimented with Cubo-Futurism in Verdun.

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Félix Vallotton, Dans l'ombre (In the Shadow)

Galerie Paul Vallotton, Lausanne

Date: 1916
Technique: Woodcut on paper, 17,7 x 22,5 cm

Before going to the front to attempt to paint the war, Vallotton (1865-1925) engraved emblematic images of it. His album entitled This is War is a collection of his woodcuts - a technique he mastered during the 1890s - one which demands extreme simplicity, bold contrasts between black and white, and ruggedness of line. This makes it particularly appropriate for depicting warfare, groping with knives in the dark sapping trenches, between enemies who could hardly see each other. The details on the helmets are all there is to indicate the nationality of either side.

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Félix Vallotton, Les barbelés (Barbed-wire)

Galerie Paul Vallotton, Lausanne

Date: 1916
Technique: Woodcut, 25.2 x 33.5 cm

Whilst Grosz uses the resources of lithography, Vallotton relies on wood engraving to produce a more diagrammatic picture, a symbol rather than a description, two dead men in an entanglement of wires. Their forms are barely distinguishable from the tangled wire, their limbs resemble wooden posts and their bodies are already disappearing. Overhead, a far cry from Orpen's insolently blue sky, a beautiful starry night - nature remains indifferent to the carnage.

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Félix Vallotton, Le plateau de Bolante (Bolante Plateau)

Musée d'Histoire Contemporaine - BDIC, Paris

Date: 1917
Technique: Oil on canvas

Although the one is describing the Artois region and the other is painting the Argonne, the words of Victor Hugo fit Vallotton's landscapes where there is no sign of the thousands of men hidden in the trenches. We may well look far into the distance, as far as the horizon, scour the slopes of mutilated trees and the plain in the distance, there is nothing living to be seen, there are only a few wisps of white smoke and the barely perceptible furrows of the communication trenches dug in the ground. The work is disappointing, being short on picturesqueness, pathos, and intensity - Vallotton was certainly aware of this and yet he refused to cheat. He wished to paint only what the soldier saw: earth, patches of grass, tree trunks and sky.

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