

They preached spiritual renewal and, more productively, a jettisoning of the canvas’s illusionistic space in favor of stylization, lurid color, and an overt use of ornament. He soon fell in with the Nabis (Hebrew for “prophets”), a group united in their esteem for Gauguin and Cézanne that included Bonnard and Vuillard.


What, aside from double-entry bookkeeping, lurked in the heart of the bourgeoisie, and how to represent its likeness?Įnter Félix Vallotton, striver son in a Swiss bourgeois family who came to Paris in 1882 and enrolled at the Académie Julian, a freewheeling alternative to the École des Beaux-Arts. In little more than a century, this newish class had gone from being comedic fast-talking Figaros to planet-altering overlords striding across the globe in search of a soul, status, and an appropriate self-image. The bourgeoisie: now there’s a subject for a nineteenth-century artist.
