Père
1894
Medium
lithograph in black on light brown wove paper
Dimensions
sheet: 29 x 36.8 cm (11 7/16 x 14 1/2 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of The Atlas Foundation
Accession Number
1995.76.93
Art Historical Context
Félix Vallotton’s 1894 lithograph *Père* offers a quietly powerful meditation on family and identity. A Swiss artist who settled in Paris, Vallotton was then associated with the Nabis circle, whose members sought to bring art into daily life through simplified forms and emotional resonance. The title, French for “Father,” suggests a portrait or domestic scene that distills personal relationships into a spare, graphic image. Printed in black on light brown wove paper, the work highlights lithography’s distinctive qualities: rich velvety blacks, crisp lines, and the subtle warmth of the paper i...
About the Artist
Félix Vallotton
Félix Vallotton (1865–1925) was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, into a comfortable middle-class family, and moved to Paris in 1882 to enroll at the Académie Julian, where he studied under the portrait painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre and the history painter Gustave Boulanger. Paris would remain his home for the rest of his life, and he became a French citizen in 1900 following his marriage to the art ...