Jeune femme en rouge, c. 1916
stamped with initials
watercolour and pencil
10 1/4 x 7 7/8 in, 26 x 20 cm
Provenance
Private Collection, UKConnaught Brown, London
Private Collection, UK
Valtat studied at the Academie Julian in 1888 where he met Bonnard, Vuillard and Albert André. A close friend of the Nabis, Valtat frequented their favourite meeting place, the café Volpini, and shared their decorative use of colour and ‘intimisme’.
The artist was also part of a vibrant Parisian scene of artists/illustrators. Living a bohemian lifestyle in the early 1890s, he became very interested in the work of Toulouse-Lautrec, whose influence can be traced in Valtat’s expressive use of line and fluid sketchy brushwork.
Valtat went much further than his Nabis associates in the way he pushed the exploration of the symbolic use of colour. In this he can be seen to have anticipated the Fauvist movement, with which he was associated by participating in the scandalous “Cage des Fauves” Salon d’Automne of 1905.
The female figure was a key subject for Valtat, as it was, of course, for his contemporaries Bonnard and Vuillard. Jeune Femme en Rouge can be related to Valtat’s many other scenes of women, which gained a heightened personal significance for the artist following his marriage in 1900.
This watercolour bears the letter head of an aviation firm and of an engineer, Louis Noel. Noel was the brother of Suzanne Valtat, wife of the artist. He was a pioneer of the French aviation and sevred in military airforces at the beginning of the First World War (1914-18), however was killed in action in September 1914.
From that point on, Louis Valtat must have made use of the headed paper belonging to this aviation firm for whom his dead brother-in-law had worked, in order to paint this watercolour.
The artist was also part of a vibrant Parisian scene of artists/illustrators. Living a bohemian lifestyle in the early 1890s, he became very interested in the work of Toulouse-Lautrec, whose influence can be traced in Valtat’s expressive use of line and fluid sketchy brushwork.
Valtat went much further than his Nabis associates in the way he pushed the exploration of the symbolic use of colour. In this he can be seen to have anticipated the Fauvist movement, with which he was associated by participating in the scandalous “Cage des Fauves” Salon d’Automne of 1905.
The female figure was a key subject for Valtat, as it was, of course, for his contemporaries Bonnard and Vuillard. Jeune Femme en Rouge can be related to Valtat’s many other scenes of women, which gained a heightened personal significance for the artist following his marriage in 1900.
This watercolour bears the letter head of an aviation firm and of an engineer, Louis Noel. Noel was the brother of Suzanne Valtat, wife of the artist. He was a pioneer of the French aviation and sevred in military airforces at the beginning of the First World War (1914-18), however was killed in action in September 1914.
From that point on, Louis Valtat must have made use of the headed paper belonging to this aviation firm for whom his dead brother-in-law had worked, in order to paint this watercolour.