Louis Valtat
Encyclopedia
Louis Valtat[p]  was a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 painter associated with the Fauves
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...

.
Valtat is noted as a key link that accounts for the stylistic transition in painting from Monet to Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

.

Louis Valtat is considered as one of the leaders and founders of the Fauvist movement (meaning "the wild beasts" for their wild, expressionist-like use of color), which did not formally begin until 1905 at the Salon d'Automne
Salon d'Automne
In 1903, the first Salon d'Automne was organized by Georges Rouault, André Derain, Henri Matisse, Angele Delasalle and Albert Marquet as a reaction to the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon...

.
Valtat was involved with the most influential groups of artists, such as Auguste Renoir, Paul Signac
Paul Signac
Paul Signac was a French neo-impressionist painter who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the pointillist style.-Biography:Paul Victor Jules Signac was born in Paris on 11 November 1863...

, Georges d'Espagnat and Maximilien Luce
Maximilien Luce
Maximilien Luce was a French Neo-impressionist artist. A printmaker, painter, and anarchist, Luce is best known for his pointillist canvases. He grew up in the working class Montparnasse, and became a painter of landscapes and urban scenes which frequently emphasize the activities of people at work...

.

Life and work

Louis Valtat was born on August 8, 1869 in Dieppe, Seine-Maritime
Dieppe, Seine-Maritime
Dieppe is a commune in the Seine-Maritime department in France. In 1999, the population of the whole Dieppe urban area was 81,419.A port on the English Channel, famous for its scallops, and with a regular ferry service from the Gare Maritime to Newhaven in England, Dieppe also has a popular pebbled...

, in the Normandy region of France, into a wealthy family of ship owners. Valtat spent many of his childhood years in Versailles
Versailles
Versailles , a city renowned for its château, the Palace of Versailles, was the de facto capital of the kingdom of France for over a century, from 1682 to 1789. It is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and remains an important administrative and judicial centre...

, a suburb of Paris, where he attended secondary school at the Lycée Hoche
Lycée Hoche
The Lycée Hoche is a public secondary school located in Versailles, not very far away from the famous Palace of Versailles. Formerly, it had been a nunnery founded by French queen Maria Leszczyńska. However, after the French Revolution, it became a school in 1803...

 (near the Palace of Versailles
Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles , or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. In French it is the Château de Versailles....

). Encouraged by his father, an amateur landscape painter himself, Valtat became interested in art, and at age 17, deciding to pursue an artistic career, applied to the School of Fine Arts in Paris. After being accepted, in 1887, Valtat moved to Paris to enroll at the École des Beaux Arts de Paris, where he studied with the well-known academic artists Gustave Boulanger
Gustave Boulanger
Gustave Clarence Rodolphe Boulanger was a French figure painter known for his Neo-Grec style. He was born at Paris, studied with Delaroche and Jollivet, and in 1849 took the Prix de Rome. His paintings are prime examples of academic art of the time, particularly history painting...

 (1824–1888), Jules Lefebvre (1836–1911), and later with Benjamin Constant
Benjamin Constant
Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was a Swiss-born French nobleman, thinker, writer and politician.-Biography:...

 (1845–1902).

After the Ecole, Valtat studied at the Académie Julian
Académie Julian
The Académie Julian was an art school in Paris, France.Rodolphe Julian established the Académie Julian in 1868 at the Passage des Panoramas, as a private studio school for art students. The Académie Julian not only prepared students to the exams at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, but offered...

 (Julian Academy) under Jules Dupré
Jules Dupré
Jules Dupré , French painter, was one of the chief members of the Barbizon school of landscape painters. If Corot stands for the lyric and Rousseau for the epic aspect of the poetry of nature, Dupré is the exponent of her tragic and dramatic aspects.Dupré exhibited first at the Salon in 1831, and...

 (1811–1889), a landscape painter of the Barbizon school. Among his fellow students were: Albert Andre (1869–1954), who became a close friend, as well as Maurice Denis
Maurice Denis
Maurice Denis was a French painter and writer, and a member of the Symbolist and Les Nabis movements. His theories contributed to the foundations of cubism, fauvism, and abstract art.-Childhood and education:...

 (1870–1943), Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard
Pierre Bonnard was a French painter and printmaker, as well as a founding member of Les Nabis.-Biography:...

 (1867–1947), and Edouard Vuillard
Édouard Vuillard
Jean-Édouard Vuillard was a French painter and printmaker associated with the Nabis.-Early years and education:...

 (1868–1940), who, at that time, were members of the Nabis movement
Nabis
Nabis was ruler of Sparta from 207 BC to 192 BC, during the years of the First and Second Macedonian Wars and the War against Nabis. After taking the throne by executing two claimants, he began rebuilding Sparta's power. During the Second Macedonian War, he sided with King Philip V of Macedon and...

. Calling themselves "Nabis" (after the Hebrew word meaning prophets), they were influenced by Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...

's (1848–1903) Synthetist
Synthetism
Synthetism is a term used by post-Impressionist artists like Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard and Louis Anquetin to distinguish their work from Impressionism. Earlier, Synthetism has been connected to the term Cloisonnism, and later to Symbolism...

 method of painting based on the use of simple forms/lines, pure colors, and large patterns. While Valtat remained detached from that movement, he learned from them, the Gauguin method of painting which would influence his later works.

In 1890, upon winning the Jauvin d’Attainville prize, Valtat established his own studio at rue La Glaciere in Paris. Valtat made his debut, in 1893, at the Salon of Independent Artists, displaying several paintings depicting street scenes of the neighborhood surrounding his art studio. One of those paintings, titled Sur Le Boulevard (On The Boulevard, 1893) was noted by the art critic Félix Fénéon
Félix Fénéon
Félix Fénéon was a Parisian anarchist and art critic during the late 19th century...

. During this early period in his career, Valtat used the spontaneous light touches of Impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...

 (although with bordered objects) and the colorful dots/points found in Pointillism
Pointillism
Pointillism is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Georges Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term Pointillism was first coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works...

. Two examples representing Valtat's work during this period include Péniches (Barges, 1892) and the Pommiers (The Apple Trees, 1894). As noted by Cogniat, Péniches has the impressionistic rendering of the mobile reflections of rippling water" while Pommiers is "alive with the dazzling brilliance of sunlit reds and yellows intensified by the stippled strokes of green".

Valtat exhibited widely during his career. In 1894, Louis Valtat collaborated with both Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...

 and Albert André in creating the decor for the Paris theater "L'Oeuvre" at the request of Lugné Poë.

Valtat suffered from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

, and he spent many autumn/winter seasons along the Mediterranean coast in Banyuls, Antheor and Saint-Tropez
Saint-Tropez
Saint-Tropez is a town, 104 km to the east of Marseille, in the Var department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southeastern France. It is also the principal town in the canton of Saint-Tropez....

. Often, Valtat and his family would visit Paul Signac
Paul Signac
Paul Signac was a French neo-impressionist painter who, working with Georges Seurat, helped develop the pointillist style.-Biography:Paul Victor Jules Signac was born in Paris on 11 November 1863...

 in Bollée
Bollée
Bollée may refer to:* Éolienne Bollée, an unusual wind turbine* Amédée Bollée , French bellfounder and automobile pioneer* Léon Bollée , French automobile manufacturer and inventor** Léon Bollée Automobiles...

 and Auguste Renoir at the Maison de la Poste in Cagnes. During these times, along the Mediterranean, Valtat's use of color became a major concern to him, and he began to express his Fauvist tendencies, particularly in painting seascapes.

Selected works

The following are some paintings by Louis Valtat:
  • Composition avec trois vases (3 vases, oil on canvas)
  • La Dentelliere, c. 1906 (oil on canvas)
  • Les Rochers Rouges dans la Mer, circa 1903 (red rocks by the sea, oil on canvas)
  • Péniches, 1892 (Barges)
  • Pommiers, 1894 (The Apple Trees)
  • Sur Le Boulevard, 1893 (On The Boulevard)
  • Vase Tulipe et Violettes, 1925 (tulips and violets, oil on canvas)
  • Voilieres au Port à Ouistrehamm, ca. 1930 (Ouistrehamm, oil on canvas)

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