Félix Vallotton, life at distance

"Throughout my existence, I have been he who looks through a window at life while not living life myself."

Félix Vallotton was a brilliant and subversive engraver and illustrator. He was also a prolific sketcher and portrait painter of nudes, of mythological scenes and of landscapes.

He had a plural nature, and was very different from one period to the next. Quite exceptionally, or perhaps even uniquely in the history of art, he was also a man of letters who penned critiques, essays, stage plays and novels.

Vallotton the polymorphous artist escaped all categorization. He was a rebellious anarchist yet was resolutely bourgeois; he was a member of the "Nabis" yet was an unrepentant loner; and he was humorous yet was somewhat depressive. Both the man and his œuvre are complex and mysterious.

To understand them, the viewer is invited to take part in a form of treasure hunt. Through the different styles of the artist and to the very core of the writer, two clues emerge: a distance from the world and an obsession with water.