Three Bathers
1894
Medium
woodcut on beige wove paper
Dimensions
block: 18.2 x 11.2 cm (7 3/16 x 4 7/16 in.) sheet: 28.8 x 21.9 cm (11 5/16 x 8 5/8 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Gaillard F. Ravenel and Frances P. Smyth-Ravenel
Accession Number
2000.7.39
Art Historical Context
Félix Vallotton's *Three Bathers* (1894) is a striking woodcut on beige wove paper, measuring a compact 18.2 x 11.2 cm on the block. Created during the artist's early years in Paris, this intimate print captures three nude figures in a serene bathing scene, rendered with Vallotton's signature precision and economy of line. As a Swiss-born painter and printmaker associated with the post-Impressionist group Les Nabis, Vallotton revitalized the woodcut medium, drawing inspiration from Japanese ukiyo-e prints to produce bold, flattened forms and dramatic contrasts. Vallotton's woodcuts from the 1...
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 ...