• Artists
• Museums
• Auctioneers
• Galleries

Swiss printmaker, painter and critic, active in France.
He attended school in Lausanne, then moved to Paris in 1882 and enrolled as an art student at the Académie Julian. Paris remained his main base for the rest of his life, although he returned regularly to Switzerland to see his family. He became a close friend of Charles Cottet and Charles Maurin, who was his teacher and mentor. As a student, copying in the Louvre, Vallotton was drawn to the minute realism of the earlier masters, in particular Holbein, whose work he sought to emulate. He succeeded in having portraits accepted by the Salon jury in 1885 and 1886.

Vallotton first tried his hand at etching in 1897 and subsequently produced a large number of wood engravings, quickly winning renown as a graphic artist. He contributed to many magazines, including the Revue Blanche, Le Rire and L'Assiette au Beurre, and designed posters.

In 1893 Vallotton broke away from the Société des Artistes Français and exhibited his picture Bathing on a Summer Evening at the Salon des Indépendants, where it was unanimously attacked by conservative critics. He also sent his works to the first Gallery of the Art Nouveau. By this time Vallotton had joined up with the Nabis and participated in their exhibitions. In 1900 he was granted French citizenship and thanks to his marriage, in 1899, to a girl from the Bernheim family became a man of means. He constantly exhibited at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery together with Bonnard, Vuillard and Rouseel, and was among the organizers of the Salon d'Automne. He displayed his works at the exhibitions of the Vienna Sezession group, published his articles in the Munich magazine Jugend and the English magazine Chap-Book, but it was only in 1910 that he was introduced to the public in Switzerland.

In 1913 Vallotton visited Russia on the invitation of the collector G. Haasen whose portrait he completed in St. Petersburg.
During the First World War the artist produced an anti-war series of drawings and painted his famous picture Verdun. In the 1920s he regularly exhibited at the Salon d'Automne, though his popularity underwent a marked decline.

The artist died in Paris December 29, 1925.

Apart from his work in the fields of painting, drawing and sculpture, Vallotton wrote three novels and a number of plays. His illustrated autobiographical novel La Vie Meurtrière (The Deadly Life) was published in 1930.