A man of women

Sabine Altorfer | Die Zeit | 29th December 2025

Critics are ambivalent about Vallotton. He moved to Paris as a teenager and found that engravings and illustrations perfectly suited his talent for composition. So far so good. After his marriage in 1899 he turned to painting. This work is technically accomplished, but sometimes without any clear tone. His female nudes often portrayed them “like curiosities of art history”. Concludes one writer, Vallotton was “relatively stolid and unadventurous”.