Felix and Lawton: Life in the Service of Art

Félix Valloton, the most French of Swiss painters, died a century ago. 2025 is therefore his year. The Retrospective “Vallotton Forever“, now, 24.10.2025 – 15.2.2026, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, shows 268 of his works, some of which are being shown for the first time. And Lawton was a painter, engraver, caricaturist, illustrator, for the first time all the fields together and in a setting that recreates the artist’s rooms.

Veloton was born in Lausanne in 1865 but at the age of 16 he came to Paris and remained there until his death in 1925. In 1900 he received French citizenship, without giving up his Swiss citizenship, and maintained close ties with his country of origin. He spent his honeymoon in Switzerland but wanted to be buried in France, and so he was. Felix Veloton is buried in the Montparnasse cemetery next to his wife, Gabrielle Berenheim, who died seven years after him. Veloton felt French and when World War I broke out, he proved his patriotism.

Switzerland, France, Europe and the entire art world pay tribute to this prolific artist, who, although he died at the age of 60, painted more than 1700 pictures and created 250 woodcuts. A painter and engraver, Lawton was also a writer, playwright and art critic. He wrote ten plays and three novels, the best known of which is called “A Murderous Life” (The murderous life) and contains autobiographical lines. He also illustrated newspapers, magazines and books – several hundred and wrote thirty articles on art. Lawton also kept a personal diary in which he described his moods and documented what happened to him, all of which were in the context of his art, of course.

Throughout his life, Velutton searched for his artistic path among these and other influences. Felix Velutton subordinated his life to the service of art. Nothing was more important to him than fulfilling his artistic destiny. His personality was very complex and full of contradictions, enigmatic, mysterious. Many books have been written about him. This article will touch on a few lines but of course cannot be exhaustive.

Felix Velutton's themes and styles are many and varied. Portraits, street scenes and intimate scenes, the woman – naked and clothed, the couple – legally married or adulterous, lesbian couples, landscapes, still life, war, mythology. Velutton eschews the avant-garde, except for the period when he was associated with the Nabi movement, and eschews academicism. In his works, he confronts the viewer, through a realism that demands thoughtful observation, with his artistic ambitions and inner turmoil.

It seemed to him, to the older man, the artist at the end of the road, who only a few weeks ago had been called “Little Voloton.” “Life is smoke, we struggle, we deceive ourselves, we cling to ghosts that disappear under our grasp, and death is there. But there is, for the most fortunate, the painting.”

Through the expression of his talents, Velloton became acquainted with the elite of the artistic and literary world of his time. Loyal friends surrounded him, women loved him. He visited the beautiful cities of Europe and stayed in magnificent places whose landscapes are forever preserved in his paintings. However, he cultivated, with a kind of gloomy pleasure, a melancholy that stemmed, it must be said, among other things, from his mother's predatory personality.

Arrival in Paris

In 1882, when he was only 16 years old, Felix Veluton left his hometown of Lausanne to live his passion for painting in Paris. The future would fulfill his hopes, he was sure of it. He was content with little, he was robust. Veluton watched a turbulent artistic world. Manet, Degas and the Impressionists had been fighting for ten years against the academic painting that dominated the salons. Veluton would seek his way stubbornly, resolutely.

His first self-portrait, from 1885 (seven more would follow), seems to declare, “I am a painter.” His gaze is defiant and expresses his determination to succeed in competitive Paris, full of avant-garde artists thirsting for recognition.

Velutton does not, however, try to flatter himself. His mother's puritanical upbringing weighs on him and the feeling of discomfort will initially settle on him and make him feel alien and unwelcome. However, with this self-portrait, the 20-year-old Velutton enters the list of important artists and starting from this year, 1885, he will keep a book, Le livre de raison, in which he will meticulously document every work he produces until the end of his life. This is also the year in which he will first exhibit his works (portraits) in exhibitions, at the "Salon des Artists Français" and the "Swiss Salon des Beaux-Arts" in Geneva.

Felix Velutton, Self-portrait, 1885. Source: Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain

Velutton studied at the Académie Julian and copied masterpieces at the Louvre. This was a necessary stage in the life of a 19th-century painter. Like Courbet, Cézanne, and Manet before him, Velutton copied to reach the level of Leonardo da Vinci and Hans Holbein the Younger, his first idols. “The days at the Louvre were the best and most fulfilling of my life,” he would say. The Louvre It is a new, dazzling land to be discovered.

And Lawton was educated, learned, and knew the history of art and literature inside out. He was not only in love with Leonardo, Holbein, Vermeer, Dürer, Poussin, Ingres, Courbet, but also with Dostoevsky and Stendhal.

His notebooks are filled with sketches of the Mona Lisa and his mother. Both are distant women. And Lawton tries to break free from the strict Protestant upbringing his mother gave him. She writes to him every week, spying on his every move.

Felix and Lawton, the artist's mother, 1884. Source: Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain

Ellen Shetna, model and partner

How different Paris From Lausanne… The Paris of “La Belle Epoque” mesmerizes and frightens Velutton. He has no experience with women and feels uncomfortable with them, for now. Shy, blond, thin, meticulous, cautious, suspicious. At the age of 23, his first love was with a little milliner, Hélène Chatenay, who served as his model, living in the Latin Quarter.

Felix's mother did not approve of the affair, describing it as a breach of family honor. Felix defended himself and enlisted his older brother Paul to help convince his mother that there was nothing wrong with this love story that lasted, despite criticism, for ten years, from 1889 to 1899, the year in which he abandoned her in favor of a wealthy bourgeois woman, a common practice at the time. Felix, far from his mother, continued his pictorial experiments with Alain as a model.

The masterpiece “La malade” shows Ellen from behind, with only the delicate nape of her neck and part of her upper back and right arm visible. The velvety texture of the skin, the strands of hair escaping from the hairstyle, the loose shirt, the folds of the sheets. No, we don’t see her face. The photographic precision with which this young woman is observed and drawn, leaning to the side, is admirable.

Felix and Lawton, The Patient, 1892. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

Next to the bed is a small side table on which the artist presents a magnificently painted still life consisting of bottles, a glass, and a medicine bottle. One of the bottles shows the reflection of a large and a small window, which are probably behind the viewer or the painter.

On the right, above the patient, an engraving shows a plaster sculpture by Gustave Doré exhibited at the Salon of 1880, of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus. The Madonna stands out clearly against a dark background, contrasting with the light page around her.

The patient's dark hair over her white nightgown creates another parallel contrast, while on the right, the maid entering with a cup of tea on a tray has light hair over a black dress, another play of contrasts. The maid's entrance is theatrical, as if entering a stage before which we sit as spectators.

In stark contrast to the patient's sensual posture and the concealment of her face, the servant faces the viewer, her face open, with the cup of drink, erect, meticulous, regal, somewhat monastic, her eyes fixed on space, lost in her reflections, as if from another world. Although she is facing us, as if advancing towards us, there is something mysterious and strange about her.

The hidden aspect, a form of symbolism. Who is the mistress and who is the servant, what is the nature of the two figures, mixed with realism, the room, the glassware and the chest of drawers, the bed, the drawing of the “Virgin and Child” (The Virgin and Child) by Gustave Doré on the wall.

The painting “The Sick Woman” is a tribute to Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch, and the 17th-century Dutch artists. And Lawton admired the earlier ones who focused on the domestic space where the figures move relatively freely. This intimacy allows for expressions of authenticity in reality and on the canvas.

But the modernity of the painting is expressed in the lack of connection between the figures. Contrary to what the figure of the generous Madonna might suggest, the maid's gaze is not directed at the patient, from whom she seems to detach herself as a healthy person, but forward. Veloton breaks with the traditional narrative. In the alienation between the figures, one can already recognize Veloton's influence on Edward Hopper.

The painting “The Patient,” in which Velutton opens the door to a new aesthetic, is a virtuosic culmination of ten years of study in Paris.

Joining the Al-Naabi Group

And Lawton caught the attention of my friends. The Nabi Group When they discovered his woodcuts at the Salon de la Rose-Croix in 1892, they took a look and were struck, fascinated by the simplification of the forms and the flat areas of black and white, one next to the other. All of this echoed their own work.

The following year, Woloton joined the Nave members and became an integral part of the group. His enigmatic painting “Bathing on a Summer Evening” (Le Bain au soir d'été), exhibited in 1893 at the Salon des Indépendants, was his first Nave painting. The painting caused scandal, ridicule, and laughter. Critics and the public were not accustomed to such works.

Felix and Lawton, Bathing on a Summer Evening, 1892-1893. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

And Luton was inspired by Lucas Cranach the Elder's painting, "The Fountain of Youth" (1546,The Fountain of Youth), but looked at the myth from a modern angle and painted an innovative painting. The flat figures, the background whose colors and sophistication are no less interesting, this is undoubtedly the masterpiece of Velutton's younger years.

Standing out among the various women and their varied poses, the woman in the center, whose face is lifted to God in an ecstatic expression and whose arms are clasped in supplication, gives her an appearance of holiness. The mixing of the trivial bathing of the other women with the religious purification of the woman descending the steps to the basin certainly contributed to the negative attitude of critics and viewers towards the young Volton's original and bold painting.

The painting “Women at the Spring” (Femmes à la source), 1899, by Paul Srouzier, founder of the Nabi Group, is similar to Velutton’s but also different. Srouzier’s painting, which is permanently housed in the Musée d’Orsay (but not always on display to the public), strikes the viewer with a sense of awe.

This is, in fact, a decorative panel, part of a series commissioned by the painter-sculptor Georges Lacombe for his castle in Normandy, Château de l'Ermitage à Saint Nicolas des Bois, divided into three parts: sky, earth, and water.

Shadows of trees against a golden sky are reflected upside down in a spring, also golden. An endless procession of women, perhaps Danaides, descend to fill their red-orange pitchers, like glowing lanterns, with the pure spring water. But what are the female figures doing above? A mystery shrouded in holiness. An allegorical scene that inspires admiration and wonder.

What distinguishes Velutton, compared to Serosier, is his mixture of the trivial with the sublime, realism with symbolism (as in his painting “The Sick Man”), while Serosier focused only on the sublime. I invite you to read my detailed article on The Nabi Group, which also mentions Felix Velutton. This will show you to what extent Velutton's painting "Bathing on a Summer Evening" fits into the aesthetics of the Nabi and how it resembles Paul Serosier's "Women at a Spring" (in the "Religious Rituals" subsection).

Wood engravings

From 1890, Velutton specialized in woodcuts. The failure of his masterpiece, “Bathing on a Summer Evening,” caused him to turn his back on painting. Velutton’s calculations were sound. The woodcuts brought him the longed-for success. The sense of insult after the ridicule he endured was replaced by hope and satisfaction: “And most of all, it encourages me to know that I am no longer an unknown. The amateurs are beginning to know me, and that is a big step. The rest will come in due time.”

And Lawton emphasizes the contrast between black and white, creates striking surfaces and stylized shapes, and thus reinvents the art of engraving. These are the secrets of his success. And above all, his very choice ofXylography, a medium that had been neglected by artists after being celebrated during the Renaissance. A great admirer of Albrecht Dürer, Velutton restored the potential of the medium by working the wood himself with a ballpoint pen, creating large areas with sharp contours and thus giving up gradation, there is no gray in his work. Velutton did not hand over the cutting to technicians, as was customary, so he had control over every detail.

Another radical choice was that of monochrome. At a time when his fellow Nabi members preferred colored posters and prints, Velutton chose a deep black, which stood in sharp contrast to the white of the paper. These choices ultimately served a synthetic graphic language influenced by Japanese prints. Depth is reduced to a single plane and expressiveness is transferred to the line: a flexible arabesque, delimiting the large black areas, a precise stroke, giving them life in decorative motifs.

Velutton's engravings cause a sensation. The audience and critics are amazed. The orders grow and grow: Velutton is asked to paint portraits of writers, artists and other celebrities (Zola, Poe, Mallarmé, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Claudel), illustrations for magazines, decorations and drawings for books. He draws his inspiration from Japanese prints and the art of photography. Velutton also takes many photographs himself and then processes the wood according to the photograph.

In “La Paresse,” from the “Intimités” series, Velloton reveals himself at his peak as an engraver: impressive contrasts between the striking black of the bedspread and pillows and the bright white of the woman’s body and the cat’s body, which seems to be an extension of her hand and arm. The rounded motifs, influenced by Japanese prints, of the pillows also contrast with the geometric motifs of the bedspread. And above all, the woman and the cat, united in their playfulness, immersed in their own sensual world, lead the reader to challenge the norms of bourgeois morality.

Felix and Lawton, Sloth, 1896. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

Veloton's success was not limited to the borders France But it brought him international recognition thanks to the diversity of his subjects. The engravings represented landscapes, intimate scenes and current events. Even before “Intimate”, Velutton had been observing with interest the passers-by on the street, the crowds that frequented the shops and clubs, the gatherings after attacks and crimes, and the criminal and historical events themselves. These were the days of the anarchist movement and Velutton was interested in its activities. Although he was not an activist, he expressed sympathy for the disadvantaged, the poor, the oppressed in his engravings. And of course he joined the camp of those who claim the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus.

The new art form was later applied by Velutton in drawings that he offered to political and satirical newspapers. These did their job. A few black and white spots under Velutton's hand were enough to illustrate the intensity of an event. The editors jumped at the chance and the artist's publicity took off to such an extent that he received orders from English, German and American newspapers.

In the engraving called “La Charge,” a dense, black crowd of police crushes lone protesters, leaving behind a few scattered victims, sprawled on the white pavement. What a predatory force in the foreground, exerted on so little resistance! The contrasts between black and white, between the two parts of the engraving, a crowded front and a half-empty back, emphasize the absurd arbitrariness of police violence.

Felix and Lawton, Assault, 1893. Source: Wikimedia, Public Domain

Felix Velutton is no longer the shy young man from the first self-portrait. A dozen years later, his portrait is completely different. In a vest and a lock of hair falling over his forehead, he does not bow his head but looks directly, self-confidently, at the viewer. Felix sells his woodcuts, they are in demand, he himself is in demand, and all of artistic and intellectual Paris knows him and invites him.

Felix Velutton, Self-portrait, 1897. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

In the homes of Misia and Theda Nathanson

Veluton is a frequent guest at the home of Theda Nathanson and his wife Misia, along with the entire group of Nauvoo painters. Veluton has become one of the star contributors to the couple's magazine, "Le Revue Blanche," and is, in fact, the chief illustrator. I invite you to read the Part 1 of my series of articles, Missia Sert: Cultural Icon, Queen of Paris, where I expanded on the experiences of this period in the life of Missia, the magazine and its actors. You will also see one of the portraits of Missia painted by Velloton, probably in 1898 at Madame Nathanson's country house. For every important detail, pay attention to Velloton's woodcut, hanging on the wall.

In both color drawings and black-and-white engravings, Welton, like his other friends, saluted Missy Sert, the charming pianist, patroness of painters, with whom everyone was in love, in one way or another. In the engraving “La Symphonie,” five of her admirers, friends of the Nave, listen to her, look at her, dream of her, and imagine her, each in a different pose.

The men are in the dark, Missia is illuminated by the light of a lamp placed on the piano. A stylish vase of flowers against the background of one of the two ornate panels of the wall behind. The flowers connect to the motifs, the other panel embeds flowers within it. Between the two panels is separated by a curtain whose folds correspond with the folds of Missia's dress under the piano. Her mystery is emphasized by the piano that hides her body.

Felix and Lawton, Symphony, 1897. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

Like Weir's paintings, Velutton's engravings are inspired by what was done inside bourgeois homes. The series "Intimacy" (Intimacies) is a ten-act satire on the bourgeois couple. The Swiss television video Intimités brings behind the scenes of the series that contributed to the great fame of Veloton.

Felix and Lawton's engravings made me think of those of Max Klinger. Look, for example, at Klinger's engraving, entitled "minting"And in the engraving by Velutton, called "suicide“In Klinger’s engraving, the drowning man’s head is clearer, in Welloton’s, you have to look for it on the left, but the two engravings are very similar, despite their differences.

Klinger is somewhat similar to Wolloton, both in his manner and personality. I invite you to read my article about him, Max Klinger, “The German Auguste Rodin”, on this site that sends you at the end to a more detailed article, Max Klinger, Art Above All, consisting of several parts, on my personal blog. The title I chose at the time for my series of articles on this German artist coincides with the title I have just chosen for the article on Felix and Lawton, which shows the deep similarity between the two artists. In addition, the Belgian painter also Fernan Knopf During those years, he was involved in his own somber and polished symbolism – and in him too, one can find the same combination of restraint and enigma that characterizes these painters.

The same theme, an unhappy relationship, depicted in several engravings from the “Intimacies” series, appears in a series of six paintings, “Interior of a House with Figures” (Interiors with figures), this time in bright colors in contrast to the ten engravings. After his marriage to Gabriel Bernheim, Velloton abandoned engravings in favor of paintings.

It is agreed that the “Intimacy” series is a criticism of Voloton’s hypocrisy and misery of bourgeois life. This is true, but I would like to quote a sentence by Voloton in which he wrote that he prefers balanced people who have a hidden tendency, which they will not admit, to err in sin. “I share this tendency,” he continued, “and that is how I want to be.” This sentence perhaps involves compassion and understanding on the part of the creator, who could have been one of their heroes, in the critical message of the engravings.

Marriage to the daughter of a wealthy art dealer

A complete surprise. Felix Velloton informed Alain Shtena of the end of the relationship. Felix decided to marry his girlfriend of four years, Gabrielle Bernheim, daughter of Alexandre Bernheim, the richest gallery owner in Paris. Gabrielle is a widow and mother of three children but is rich enough to provide for herself and her children and, together with what he earns, life will be comfortable. Her family, important art dealers, will help him advance his career. This is what he wrote to his brother Paul. The children are already grown, he reassured him. “I find them very sympathetic. I loved them. She and I are preparing to live together without changing anything, or almost, of our habits, me and my work, she and her domestic space.”

Some biographical details. Gabrielle Bernheim (1863-1932) was the widow of Isaac David “Gustav” Rodrigue Enrique (Isaac David "Gustave" RODRIGUES HENRIQUES), a member of a famous banking family from Portugal that settled in Bordeaux. Gabrielle Bernheim's husband died in 1894 at the age of 33. Their children were: Max (1884-1927), Joseph (1886-1968), Madeleine (1892-1946).

On May 10, 1899, the marriage of Felix Velutton and Gabriel Bernheim-Rodrigue Enrique is celebrated. The visit to Lausanne after them is tense. Felix's mother is not happy with the marriage to a Jewish widow from a very wealthy family, of a different social class. Spending time at the beach Normandy More successfully, Felix first photographs the landscape and then paints and interprets it according to the photograph, not on site but in the workshop. “On the Beach” (Sur la plage) shows a green sea with a piece of blue sky disguised as a small lake. Three spots of paint disguise themselves as two women and a girl. And Lawton was ahead of Nicolas de Stael.

Felix and Lawton, on the beach, 1899. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

We will encounter the yellow parasol in another painting from the beach series from the trip to Normandy, “On the Beach at Étretat.” Landscape paintings would occupy an increasing place in his work over the years.

Felix and Lawton, on the beach at Etretat, 1899. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

Three years later, in the second half of January 1901, Volloton and his wife Gabrielle stopped in Marseille on their way to Cannes, at the invitation of Felix's soulmate, the painter Edouard Viard. Returning to Paris, the Mediterranean port inspired Volloton to paint two views from the terrace of the Parc du Faro, located below the palace of the same name built for Napoleon III: one, “The Old Port of Marseille” (The old man Port of Marseilles), the second, “Le Pharo, Marseille”, faces west, with the Bay of Marseille and the Haute-Sac mountain range in the background.

Felix and Lawton, The Faroe, Marseille, 1901. Source: Wikimedia, Public Domain

While the artist, likely inspired by an initial pencil drawing, and perhaps also a photograph taken with a Kodak camera he bought in 1899, respects the topography of the site, he does not hesitate to simplify it and flatten its depth by raising the horizon.

This two-dimensionality demonstrates his adherence to the principles that govern the aesthetics of the Na'vi group to which he once belonged; the same is true for his use of dull colors, which eliminate any sense of atmospheric depth, colored planes to depict nature, and the hasty sketching of the figures. All of this gives the painting a great deal of spontaneity.

Several men in elegant winter clothes, wearing hats, a woman in a long skirt and jacket, children in sailor suits, a dog running without a leash – these elements add an anecdotal touch to the scene. The figures’ bodies, truncated by the slope, evoke a puppet theater; their silhouettes recall the zinc figures of the shadow theater that Vollton loved so much. And the wind playing in the bushes is so tangible. Vollton loved to paint the effect of the wind.

“The Cliff and the White Beach” (La Falaise Et La Grève Blanche), and Vasouy, Normandy, west of Honfleur, a dozen years later, he also painted from above, like opening a window from a hotel room on the seashore to discover the sand, the water, the curve of the coast, the meadows, yellowing towards the sea, the light, the salty air blowing in. And two tiny figures, emphasizing the infinity of nature, with their even tinier silhouette, are moving further and further away towards the edge.

Felix and Lawton, The Cliff and the White Beach, 1913. Source: Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain

Gabriel and Felix settle in a luxurious urban mansion on the right bank. Of all the paintings Felix painted, Gabriel, also In advance, after all, “Interior of a house with a woman in red from the back” (Intérieur avec femme en rouge de dos). Another room and another room and another room, mystery and tension, like in an Ibsen play or a Hitchcock film. Ellen Shtane is drawn, as we have seen, also from behind, the woman keeps a mystery. Each has a shadow. And all this in an atmosphere of sensual folds of fabric.

Felix Velutton, Woman in Red, 1903. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

Marital happiness, if it existed, did not last long. The balls and receptions in the city mansion where he lived with Gabriel were oppressive to him. The pursuit of present pleasures was not for him, as every minute of his life not devoted to art was considered a waste of time by him. Felix liked to watch and observe from the sidelines but not to be in the midst of the whirlwind. Not only did the atmosphere weigh on him and prevent him from creating, Gabriel's three children also did not gain his affection. And the two sons and the daughter returned him a similar attitude, one might say disgust.

In the painting “Dinner, Lamp Effect” (Le Dîner, effet de lampe), Gabriel’s 7-year-old daughter, Madeleine, looks at him with eyes of rage and hatred. Frightening eyes that bulge from their sockets. Who is this stranger who has burst into our lives? The light falls on the table and leaves those around him in relative darkness. The one with his back to us, Felix and Lawton, is nothing more than a black shadow, as if cut out for a cabaret shadow show. The bohemian who loves anarchists has become a bourgeois family man.

Felix and Lawton, Dinner, 1899. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

On the left, Gabriel's 15-year-old son, Max, is bored alone (the other son, Joseph, is missing) while she herself, on the right, is depicted unflatteringly, looking at her daughter with compassionate eyes. No, this is not a spiritualistic seance, this is a depressing dinner party for a 34-year-old artist who married a widow with three children in a marriage of convenience. It seems that only the black cats on the lampshade are frolicking. Your predictions, Felix, are coming true in reverse. It is true that in an instant you became the husband of a wealthy bourgeois woman from the city with a father who owns a successful gallery, but was it worth it? Who knows.

The answer was given by Velloton himself: “I detest this false life, on the margins of real life. I have suffered from it from the first days, and despite twenty years of marriage, with the same cruelty as at the beginning.” You should have thought about it first, Felix… before you were stuck until the day you died with the lady and her three children. Or was it that the change in social status and the security of receiving French citizenship, the economic well-being (travel, a spacious workshop in Honfleur, summer homes) and the help of your family (at least 75 of his works were exhibited at the Bernheim Gallery) were adequate compensation… What should you think? Felix never stops complaining in his diary that he does not have the right conditions for creation, that he will probably never achieve harmony in his life…

Felix shuts himself away in his studio as a reaction and paints female nudes compulsively. His wife Gabrielle has disappeared from his paintings. The models come and go without a break. Provocative nudity and more nudity, in the hundreds. From this seclusion was born the masterpiece “Naked Woman in Front of a Salamander” (Femme nue devant une salamandre). Salamander not in the usual sense of the word but to indicate the oven, which is so called.

The manufacturer chose this name for his oven because of the ancient myth that gained momentum in the 14th century, in which a salamander was a legendary lizard-like creature that was supposed to live, immune, in fire and be able to extinguish it. The legendary creature should not be confused, of course, with the common salamander, which spawns in water and roams the fields, but its yellow-orange spots, on a black background – flames and vapors, most likely encouraged the creation of its mythical twin. One of its nicknames is, indeed, “fire salamander.”

The sizzling fire and its writhing tongues, imprisoned behind black metal bars, in front of the fiery sensuality of the buttocks and back of the legendary, perfect woman – all of this inspires astonishment. How much teasing is the furrow of the back that seems to continue in the furrow of the back and finds an echo in the bars of the burning oven! The rounded buttocks reproduce in reverse the dome of the oven's barred window, while the woman's white body surrounded by the black background reproduces in reverse the black oven surrounded by a white frame. The fire-colored fabrics on the right, like the yellow carpet, complete the image of the fire of passion that was apparently enough for a few years of marriage to extinguish it… or even less.

The woman kneeling, her legs folded under her and not visible, her arms, apparently, clasped in front, resembles in her pose, despite her nudity, a priestess of the goddess Vesta, the goddess of fire and hearth, who was the main goddess in the cult of the home and family in ancient Rome. The role of the Vestal Virgin was to preserve the sacred fire, the eternal fire that burned in the temple of Vesta. The Vestal Virgins were considered sacred and were attributed, like the salamander, supernatural qualities of salvation or curse. Voloton's refuge, between his wife Gabrielle, her children and his social duties, was the fire of art, the sacred fire, one of the main ways of expressing which was the representation of woman, pure or monstrous.

Felix and Lawton, Salamander, 1900. Source: Wikimedia, Public Domain

And as if to add to Velutton's obsession with female nudity, his presentation of the painting "The Turkish Bath" (The Turkish Bath) by Ingres, a symphony of lines and arabesques, which was only revealed to the public in 1905, at the Salon d’Automne, dazzled him. “There is nothing like the way Ingres frames the shapes with his brushstrokes to make me feel the warmth of a woman’s body and the gravity of a field.” Velutton draws first, the drawing is more important than the colors and precedes them. Like a Swiss watchmaker, Velutton constructs his painting meticulously.

A typical example of a painting as complex as a Swiss watch is “The Models’ Rest” (Le repos des modèles). Two tired models relax in front of a mirror in which the painter’s reflection is absent but three paintings are present. The tall one on the left depicts Felix’s parents, their faces cut off at eye level.

Felix and Lawton, The Models Rest, 1905. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

Two years after he was moved and laughed and cried before Ingres' painting, he painted himself A painting that bore the same nameThere is a resemblance to Anger, but Velutton's figures are characterized by his own unique style, a combination of realism, body structure and hairstyles that he saw with his own eyes, and a form of symbolism, a hidden face, a strange look in the eyes of two of the women.

1908, as we have seen, is the year in which Velutton paints a lot of nudes, according to sketches, as is his custom in landscape paintings. The painting “Autumn” (L’Automne) presents a bold and proud pose of a woman built like a falcon, whose body is bisected by a long, narrow green scarf, which she holds in her teeth, and which emphasizes their symmetries. Her provocative expression and the liquid texture of the scarf, or perhaps its resemblance to a snake, reinforce the provocative aspect. Her mysterious, pensive gaze and her stylish hairdo, decorated with a green ribbon, a reference to the scarf, somewhat soften her explosive sexuality. Is she a dancer? cabaret In the style of Cicciolina preparing for a performance?

Felix and Lawton, Autumn, 1908. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

Felix is ​​approaching 40, has he freed himself from his parents' gaze yet? His parents are getting old, have lost interest in life and are looking forward to their death, Felix writes to his brother Paul. But Ellen Shetna, the faithful Ellen who accompanied him for ten years, lost her life before she reached the age of forty, in a car accident. “Dear Paul, I have received sad news, the death of little Shetna. Great sorrow surrounds me because she had a heart of gold. With her, an entire past and a large part of my youth died.”

Velutton's paintings of female nudes are scandalous but sell well. His realistic nudes influenced the expressionists, such as the German Kirchner, the Norwegian Munch, the Americans Rothko and Milton Avery. Velutton is now considered a pioneer of the "New Objectivity", Neue Sachlichkeit, a movement that followed Expressionism in the 1920s in Germany.

Despite the efforts of his brother Paul, a gallery manager in Lausanne, to promote him, he was still unknown in Switzerland until his meeting in 1908 with a couple of collectors from Winterthur, an industrial city near Zurich, Hedi and Arthur Henleuser (Arthur and Hedy Hahnloser), turns the bowl upside down. Hedi and Arthur were the first to buy Velutton's works and advertised him throughout Switzerland. The painting “The White and the Black” (La Blanche et la Noire), which they purchased and hung on the walls of their home in conservative Winterthur, made a particular noise. The city was buzzing and talking about nothing but the painting that the couple hung in the living room of their villa.

Felix and Lawton, The White and the Black, 1913. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

A nod, of course, to “Olympia” (Olympia) of Manet, but Lawton reversed the figures. In Manet's painting, the black woman is the servant and the white woman is the mistress. And here? The white woman, with red hair, lies, asleep or with only her eyes closed, relaxed, a rosy blush on her cheek exposed to the viewer. The black woman, sitting, awake, dressed and adorned, looks at her with a lordly gaze, a cigarette in her mouth. Where is this couple and what is their relationship, I have an opinion but I leave it to you to think what you want. Everyone can tell their own story, starting from the painting.

mythology

Felix and Lawton, like Freud, searched at the beginning of the century for the keys to understanding the human soul in Greek mythology. Under his brush, its scenes become what they were originally, depictions of violence, like The Kidnapping of Princess Europa וThe tearing apart of Orpheus. The fantasies are drawn with brutal, unbearable realism. His view of the relationship between men and women is very pessimistic, there is no other option than an endless war of victors and vanquished. Women are no less cruel than men, as the fate of Orpheus shows.

The painting “Andromeda Standing and Perseus” (Andromède debout et Persée) is the least shocking of them.

Felix and Lawton, Andromeda Standing and Perseus, 1907. Source: Wikimedia, Public Domain

The painting “Hate” (La haine) illustrates the painful grotesqueness of his conclusion. This painting is included in “The Great Machines,” as Velloton called his mythological-allegorical series, which is considered the least qualitative of the artist’s entire work, even today when his appreciation for him is only growing.

The painting “Hate” is reminiscent of “אדם וחוה"Dürer's" and "The Expulsion from Paradise" by Masaccio, in a personal, somewhat parodic, adaptation by Volton. The restrained violence is expressed in the poses of the naked couple, like boxers with faces distorted with rage.

Felix and Lawton, Hatred, 1908. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

war

And Lawton felt deeply humiliated when the authorities rejected his request to enlist, due to his age, a blow to his patriotism. And Lawton is approaching fifty and has no choice but to volunteer for the ranks of the “army painters,” to document, not fight. And Lawton arrives at the front for 18 days, but how to paint the war?

Through geometric shapes. In his painting “Verdun,” Cobo-Futuristic, you see the spotlights, the rain, the gun smoke. The subtitle of the painting says a lot: “A picture of war, in the mirror of interpretation, colored projections in black, blue and red, destruction, gas clouds.”

Felix and Lawton, Verdun, 1917. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

Although Voloton's initial intention was to denounce war, paradoxically a kind of decorative beauty emerges from the intersecting rays, black and colorful, above the crumbling stones, the felled tree trunks, the tongues of fire, the clouds of gas and smoke, and the lines of rain. But this (relative) beauty does not detract from the apocalyptic atmosphere of the painting, without soldiers, without wounded, without dead, which illustrates, precisely by their absence, the mechanical monstrosity of war, which tramples on humanity, denies it, and does not recognize it.

The diagonal ray technique appears, indeed, in an earlier painting, “Rayon” (Le rayon), to emphasize the pastoral beauty of the landscape.

Felix and Lawton, Karen, 1909. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

It should be noted that before he went to the front, in 1916, Velloton published at his own expense, even though he was short of money, according to his words, an album of 6 engravings, “This is war!” (It's war!), which are not as abstract as “Verdun.” These were snapshots of the conflict that he knew at the time only through newspapers, news diaries, and eyewitness accounts. He brought about a dozen more paintings from the front, but it was “Verdun,” which he painted in his spacious studio in Honfleur, while he was not at the scene of Verdun, that gained international fame.

And Lawton understood the futility of conventional methods for representing the battle itself and therefore used the resources of the embryonic theories of Cubism to create a painting that was exceptional in his career. The straight lines, closing diagonally, illustrate the erosion of the individual in the teeth of the cruel trapping machines, while the distorted landscape symbolizes, above all, the hell of the First World War, which reached its apogee at the Battle of Verdun.

Recent years

In his last years, Velutton increasingly abandoned the company of people to wander in nature and paint only the emotions it aroused in him, in accordance with the architecture he wanted to build for his picture, without other constraints. Nature was his refuge, a place of admiration and inspiration. These landscape paintings are extremely impressive, like unnatural visions from another world, the world of dreams. Velutton was blessed with revelations and the viewer enjoyed them.

The painting “Landscape of the Creuse” (Paysage de la Creuse), for example, inspires wonder with the bright yellow tree in the foreground, with smaller branches to its left and right, against the background of shades of green and purple on several levels, in the bright section of the river, shaded by its more distant shore. The more we look, the more details we discover, and this is a prominent characteristic of Velutton’s work.

Felix and Lawton, Landscape in the Kerez District, 1925. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

And Lawton did not set up his easel in front of the landscape. He would wander around with a notebook, drawing divided sketches with numbers on each section and color designations, one number for purple, one number for yellow. When he returned home, he would complete the sketch and color it, sometimes after a few days, sometimes after a few weeks.

A tree with points of light, in a more realistic painting, is found in the “Jardin d’agrumes in Cannes” à Cagnes), two years earlier. It is possible that he transferred the tree he saw in Cannes to the painting “Landscape in the Kerz District”, in several versions, the most prominent of which is brighter. And Lawton liked to take a piece of nature or more from memory, pieces from drawings, pieces from photographs and edit all the pieces according to the emotions they caused him.

Felix and Lawton, A Citrus Orchard at Cannes, 1923. Source: Wikimedia Commons, in the public domain

Velutton, who had suffered from sciatica since 1916, decided in the late autumn of 1920 to spend the winter months in the south of France. The artist and his wife arrived in Cannes on 24 November 1920, and stayed in a guesthouse at the top of the village. They lived there every winter until 1924, when Velutton purchased an old mansion.

The painter, accustomed to the low, gray skies of Normandy, was initially surprised by the intensity of the midday winter sun. In a letter to his brother Paul, dated December 26, 1920, he wrote: “I have finally begun to work, but the result does not satisfy me at all; I am a little confused by the great amount of light […] I no longer recognize myself in my palette.”

And Lawton, however, quickly adapted to the new light. He then chose shades he had not used before: bright blues, reddish, oranges and purples, warm greens and yellows, whose brilliance was emphasized by strong colored shadows. But more than the southern light, it was boldness that guided his choices.

In the painting, “Ruisseau rouille et galets blanc,” the dense forest in the background seems imbued with the almost unreal glow of the stream. The whiteness of the ripples echoes in the tangle of bare branches, which form a network of long threads that illuminate the upper half of the painting. The curves of the banks, the vibrations of the water surface, and the pebbles shimmering in the sunlight penetrating the vegetation, the stream as a colorful sheet of water – all of these are evidence that the legacy of the Nabi era still strongly influenced Velutton’s landscapes of the 20s.

Felix and Lawton, Brown-Orange Stream and White Pebbles, 1921. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

And Lawton became increasingly melancholic and bitter. His health deteriorated. His last self-portrait, with easel, canvas, and paints, seals his identity as a painter for whom his art was everything. A thoughtful look, perhaps one of resignation. Painting never failed him, it was always a comfort that could be relied on in gloomy days. He had come a long way since the first portrait at the age of 20. Until his death in 1925, he did not stop painting.

Felix Velutton, Self-portrait, 1923. Source: Wikimedia, in the public domain

legacy

Between failures and successes, especially successes, and Lawton participated in major international exhibitions and won publicity from the public and great appreciation from his colleagues and students even in his lifetime before becoming a milestone for a new generation of painters. He knew the elite of the art and literary world of his time, loyal friends surrounded him, women loved him. He visited the most beautiful cities of Europe and stayed in magnificent places whose landscapes are forever preserved in his paintings. However, he cultivated, with a kind of gloomy pleasure, a melancholy that probably stemmed from the authoritarian personality of his mother, who did not recognize him as an independent individual, but as an object that he had to please her and not himself.

Exhibitions featuring Veloton in Lausanne, Geneva, Zurich, Winterthur, Vevey, Ascona, Paris, Aix-en-Provence Provence, Amsterdam, Tokyo, London, New York attract hundreds of thousands of visitors. His pictures hunt the viewer, overshadow those of other painters, intriguing, worrying and disturbing or pulsating and vibrating with their profound beauty and poetic power. The publication of Welloton Post Mortem exceeds, as he felt, even that which he achieved during his lifetime.

And Lawton did not strive to be original. He was himself. Forty years of ambition, diligence, diligence, solitude. And Lawton was misogynistic but loved to seduce, anarchistic but chose to be merry, melancholic but showed a sense of humor, reveled in suffering but few in happiness and enjoyed the pleasures of life, brave and daring but shy and even succumbed here and there to depressive episodes, a good friend but preferred solitude, discreet but a fire burned inside him. Fiery subconscious currents and intense emotions shook him, but he controlled all this chaos with a cold mind and tamed it with a rich and calculated language, the language of art and the language of words. Like the grates of the fireplace that trap the tongues of the volcano in the painting “Salamander.”

“Fire Under the Ice,” is the title of his solo exhibition that took place from October 2013 to January 2014 at the “Grand Palace.” The Grand Palais (Le Grand Palais) in Paris, which was visited by more than three hundred thousand visitors. And Lawton, who lived in two countries, Switzerland and France, in two periods: the 19th and 20th centuries, and who was a maestro in two genres, painting and woodcuts, also showed great passion, which he conquered behind a fence of distance.

A palette in which muted tones alternate with vibrant, often dissonant colors. Realistic and symbolic landscapes, enigmatic, fantastic, foreshadowing surrealism. Veluton did not paint from nature, like the Impressionists. He would either photograph or make sketches and complete the painting in the workshop afterwards, which explains the imaginative tones of some of his landscape paintings. This way of painting, with the help of an intermediate document – ​​a photo or a sketch, made it easier for Veluton to distance himself from reality and express his freedom.

Intimate scenes in which the clues scattered throughout must be deciphered: on the mantelpiece in the Red Room lies a bust of Voloton himself, the observer, the voyeur, the spy. Watch out, adulterers, I'm looking at you! Behind the bust, a painting by Viard, "A Room with Six Figures" (l'Intérieur aux six personnages), which deals with a family discussion of the adulterous affair of the painter Ker-Casvier-Roussel, who cheated on his wife, Viard's eldest sister, with the wife of the painter Paul Ranson. Did you get the hint? On either side of the bust, two prints of courtesans by the Japanese Kitagawa Otamaru.

On the red table are the woman's personal belongings, another clue. The couple in the dark, on the doorstep. What does he say to her? In Velutton's paintings of rooms and apartments, one progresses step by step. A journey of the eye and the imagination. Velutton tells a story. “The Red Room,” that is the name of the painting, which is also the name of the famous novel by Johan August Strindberg, preceded Edward Hopper by twenty years.

And the sleeping woman on a purple background. The black cloth that drapes between her legs (reminiscent of the woman’s green scarf from “Autumn”) is threatening. Perhaps an external threat, perhaps an internal threat, a shadow of the woman herself. There is always more interpretation and more interpretation. The woman’s body was, for Welloton, like a laboratory and accordingly, he painted it in many ways, without exhausting it to the end. Welloton never resolved his relationship with women.

Always search, search, not be satisfied with successes, always say new things about old things, not repeat oneself. And at the same time, there is consistency in certain characteristics, which express a rich and structured inner world, such as, for example, a pensive look, poses of control and submission, truncated figures, objects as symbols or as hints, blurring of perspective, a look from behind. This is what is called personal style.

And Lawton was a brilliant artist, a major figure of European modernism, who was good at describing, documenting, and interpreting his era. He looked at it with an inquisitive eye, and his gaze broadened to be universal. And contemporary.

Veluton could have been a contemporary cartoonist, as could the Francophone Swiss illustrator Herrmann. Herrmann, a press and album artist, born in 1958, completely identifies with Veluton, admires his engravings and even defines him as his mentor. “Veluton was sophisticated and entertaining and you can still enjoy his humor today,” says Herrmann. “He looked at the society around him with a distant, understanding and ironic gaze, and in this respect he is similar to Sempé. On a higher level of satire, Veluton, the ideologue, the recruit, the anarchist, sharply mocked the police, the priests, the teachers, the establishment as a whole, and in this respect he is similar to Charlie Hebdo.”

Spanish photographer Gloria Oyarzabal, born in 1971, was deeply impressed by Velutón’s painting “The White and the Black,” in which, as we have seen, the artist went against all stereotypes to depict a dominant black woman, looking down on a white partner, lost in sleep. Gloria Oyarzabal created, according to him, a film whose first and last images are shot in two static shots. You can see them and a clip from the film at the end of This video, in which cartoonist Arman also participates.

Bulgarian painter, Nedko Sulkov (Nedko Solakov), born in 1957, lives in Sofia, one of the greatest contemporary artists, sees Vallotton as an admired role model. In his exhibition called Being Vallotton, at Villa Flora (Flora Villa), which was the residence of the Anloser couple, Nedko Sulkov stepped into Veloton's shoes and interpreted his predecessor's works in a unique way.

And if you are still not convinced of the modernity and topicality of Veloton, what do you think about the fact that in the office of Robert De Niro, or rather of former US President George Mullen, a character from an American series called “Day Zero,” which he plays, there is an engraving by Veloton, “The Demonstration” (The Manifestation)?

A final arrow in the illustration of the legacy of Veloton will be shot in the form of the sixth novel by the bestselling Swiss author, Martin Suter, called “The Last Hohenfelt” (The last Weynfeldt). Adrian Weinfelt, 50, a wealthy art appraiser, is asked to sell Velutton's "Salamander" at an auction house and finds himself surrounded by two paintings: the fake "Salamander" and the real "Salamander." The bestseller was released in 2008 and two years later was made into a film, under the same name.

Although his fellow prophets of Veloton gave him the nickname “The Stranger Na'vi"(Not only because of his origin but also because of his independence and isolation) and despite the feeling that his entire life he saw life behind a glass partition while he himself was not alive, how many of us, a hundred years after his death, feel close to him! "Vallotton Forever", is the name of the retrospective now taking place within the walls of Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, the city of the artist, celebrating him now and forever.

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-The article is based primarily on the documentary “Felix and Lawton, the Colors of Passion,” in the series Grandes œuvres et grands artistes, on the Arte channel.

Felix Vallotton, the colors of desire, Realization: Jérôme Labert, Philippe Picard, Pays: France, Suisse, 2025, Arte