Félix Vallotton

Félix Vallotton, Paris, 1913
Paul Vallotton, Lausanne, estate of Félix Vallotton, 1926, no. 323
Galerie Paul Vallotton, Lausanne, 1943, no. 3135
Private collection, Switzerland (acquired at the above gallery, 1965)

Lausanne, Galerie Bernheim-Jeune-Vallotton, Exposition Félix Vallotton, 1914
Lausanne, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Art suisse au XXe siècle/Schweizer Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert/Arte svizzera nel XXe secolo, 1964, no. 17 (Cathédrale de St-Petersbourg), (wrong title)
Zurich, Kunsthaus, Félix Vallotton, 1965, no. 191 (La Néva. Brume légère)
Paris, Musée national d’art moderne/Charleroi, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Vallotton, 1966/67, no. 76 ("La Néva")
Lausanne, Galerie Vallotton, Félix Vallotton et la Russie, 1987, no. 10
Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung/Essen, Folkwang Museum, Félix Vallotton, 1995/96, no. 83
Lyon, Musée des beaux-arts/Marseille, Musée Cantini, Les très singulier Vallotton, 2001, no. 61

Livre de raison, no. 912
Hedy Hahnloser-Bühler, Félix Vallotton et ses amis, Paris 1936, p. 214
Art suisse au XXe siècle/Schweizer Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert/Arte svizzera nel XXe secolo, exhibition catalogue, Lausanne 1964, no. 17, p.33, ill.
Rudolf Koella, Das Bild der Landschaft im Schaffen von Félix Vallotton. Wesen, Bedeutung, Entwicklung, Zurich 1969, p. 237f (LK 175)
Félix Vallotton, exhibition catalogue, Zurich 1965, no. 191 (ill. in frontispiece), (La Néva. Brume légère)
Vallotton, exhibition catalogue, Paris/Charleroi 1966, no. 76. p. 58f. (La Néva)
Günter Busch et al., Félix Vallotton. Leben und Werk, Frauenfeld 1982, p. 199, ill.
Günter Busch et al., Vallotton, 1985, pl. 146
Natalia Valentinova Brodskaïa, Félix Vallotton et la Russie, in: "Beiträge zu Kunst und Kunstgeschichte um 1900", Zurich 1986, p. 95f. and p. 96f., p. 97, no. 15, ill. (with sketch)
Marina Ducrey, Félix Vallotton. La vie, la technique, l’oeuvre peint, Lausanne 1989. p. 122f., ill.
Anne-Françoise Ponthus, La postérité du nabisme dans l‘oeuvre peint de Félix Vallotton, Paris 1992, p. 33, no. 45 (unpublished)
Félix Vallotton, exhibition catalogue, Munich/Essen 1995, no. 83, p. 55, ill.
Les très singulier Vallotton, exhibition catalogue, Lyon/Marseille 2001, no. 61, p. 140f.
Marina Ducrey with collaboration of Katia Poletti, Félix Vallotton (1865-1925). L’oeuvre peint, catalogue raisonné, Milan/Lausanne/Zurich 2005, vol. III, p. 554, no. 967, ill. (in colour)

The canvas is unlined and is attached to what certainly appears to be the original wooden stretcher. The canvas is slightly frayed around the turnover edges but structurally sound and secure and it is obviously very encouraging to find the canvas in it's original unlined state. There are some minor indentations in the canvas, particularly around the turnover edges, but these could be easily resolved with minimal localized intervention. The paint surface has an even and matt varnish layer. Inspection under ultraviolet light shows one spot in the centre of the sky, 16 cm below the upper horizontal turnover edge and 38 cm in from the right vertical turnover edge, which could be a retouching and perhaps some other tiny spot. The painting would therefore appear to be in very good and stable condition.
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Félix Vallotton, La Néva, brum légère, 1913
Le 1^er mars 1913, Vallotton embarque dans le Nord-Express à destination de Saint-Pétersbourg, à l’invitation de Georges Hasen, le représentant des chocolats Cailler en Russie, dont il a accepté de faire le portrait. Il a connu ce collectionneur et marchand occasionnel par son frère Paul Vallotton, lorsque celui-ci était à la tête de la fabrique Cailler, à Broc, en Gruyère. Un temps affreux, un rhume et le portrait en travail le confinent quelques jours à l’intérieur. Sans trop de regret, car la ville lui est apparue de prime abord «sans grand intérêt hormis la Néva, et l’Ermitage» (à son frère, mars 1913), où il se promet de retourner. Une fois remis, c’est aux alentours immédiats du palais qu’il choisit les points de vue dont il tire les croquis qu’il rapportera dans ses bagages. Quatre tableaux en résulteront, peints dans l’atelier parisien dès son retour. Ils constituent un groupe à part, qui se distingue dans son œuvre tant par la gamme chromatique que par la composition.

Des quatre toiles, La Néva, brume légère est sans conteste la plus synthétique. Sa construction en cinq bandeaux parallèles d’inégale hauteur n’est pas sans rappeler les couchers de soleil exécutés en 1911, à la différence toutefois de la large part dévolue ici au ciel et du constraste entre la netteté du premier plan et le flou dans lequel baigne le lointain. L’opposition tranchante du blanc et du noir dans le rendu de la rue et du mur qui la sépare du fleuve gelé, jusqu’aux silhouettes du réverbère et du passant frigorifié sur le point de sortir du champ, font irrésistiblement songer aux gravures sur bois réalisées par Vallotton dans les années 1890. Au loin, mais plus proches que dans la réalité par contraction de la perspective, la flèche et les coupoles de la cathédrale Pierre et Paul surgissent dans la brume comme autant de fantômes. Vallotton, qui prétendait les subtilités de la nuance hors de ses moyens, a su trouver dans cet arrière-plan d’infinies modulations de rose et de mauve pour traduire l’atmosphère glaciale qui peut figer Saint-Pétersbourg dans le silence au mois de mars.

Marina Ducrey

We would like to thank Marina Ducrey for this text contribution.

On March 1, 1913, Vallotton boarded the Nord-Express train to St Petersburg on the invitation of Georges Hasen, the representative in Russia of chocolate-maker Cailler, whose portrait he had agreed to paint. He had met this art collector and occasional merchant through his brother, when he was at the helm of the Cailler chocolate factory in Broc, in Gruyère.

Frightful weather, a heavy cold and the work required for the portrait kept him indoors for several days. However, this didn’t seem to disappoint him, since the city had seemed at first to hold “nothing of great interest, save for the Neva River and the Hermitage” (letter to his brother, 1913). He vowed to return to those two places. Once his health improved,, it was in the immediate vicinity of the palace that he chose the viewpoints from which he would draw the sketches which he would later take home in his luggage. These would eventually lead to four paintings, realised in his atelier in Paris upon his return. The works constitute a stand-alone group, distinct from the rest of his oeuvre both by their range of colours and their composition.

La Néva, brume légère (light fog) is without a doubt the most comprehensive of the four paintings. Its composition, made up of five parallel strips of varying widths, is reminiscent of the sunsets he completed in 1911. The only difference is the large space given over to the depiction of the sky, and the contrast between the sharp detail of the foreground and the haze which bathes the buildings in the distance. The juxtaposition of the clean white and solid black in the rendering of the snowy street and the wall which separates it from the icy river, as well as the freezing figure who is about to leave the frame, immediately bring to mind the woodcuts realised by Vallotton in the 1890s. In the distance - though appearing closer than they would have been in real life thanks to the painter’s contraction of perspective, the steeple and the domes of the Peter and Paul Fortress emerge from the haze, ghost-like. Vallotton, who claimed that the subtlety of nuance was beyond him, managed in depicting this backdrop in countless variations of pink and mauve, to perfectly conjure the icy atmosphere which has the ability to freeze St Petersburg in an icy silence during the month of March.