This work traces Félix Vallotton's development, bringing to life a multi-talented artist and describing the collectors who admired his works and the painters and writers he mixed with. It draws out the essential features of a style which even today defies categorizing.

The Swiss painter Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) and his artworks were uniquely poised to embrace both the dawn of modernism and the fading light of the post-impressionist and symbolist movements. Lavishly illustrated, Félix Vallotton traces the artist's life from his early days as a portraitist and printmaker to his later work as painter who prefigured European modernism. Linda Schädler and Christoph Becker reveal Valloton to be not only the most important Swiss symbolist, but an intelligent observer of his tumultuous times, highly critical of bourgeois convention. His sometimes eerie naturalism, the authors argue, links him to literary fashions of the day as well as reflecting the inception of psychoanalysis. This stunning volume forges a new understanding of landmark paintings from an especially fertile period in art history and the fascinating artist behind them.

Analyse : Catalogue de gravures sur bois et de lithographies de Vallotton.

Annotation Pierre Bonnard was the leader of a group of post-impressionist painters who called themselves the Nabis, from the Hebrew word meaning?prophet?. Bonnard, Vuillard, Roussel and Denis, the most distinguished of the Nabis, revolutionized the spirit of decorative techniques during one of the richest periods in the history of French painting. Influenced by Odilon Redon and Puvis de Chavanne, by popular imagery and Japanese etchings, this post-impressionist group was above all a close circle of friends who shared the same cultural background and interests. An increasing individualism in their art often threatened the group?s unity and although tied together by a common philosophy their work clearly diverged. This publication lets us compare and put into perspective the artists within this fascinating group. The works presented in this collection offer a palette of extraordinary poetic expressions: candid in Bonnard, ornamental and mysterious in Vuillard, gently dream-like in Denis, grim and almost in Vallotton, the author shares with us the lives of these artists to the very source of their creative gifts.

Analyse: Avec une biographie de l'artiste: p. 163-171.