Nude

Louis Valtat belonged to a generation of artists that straddled the period between Impressionism and the early-twentieth-century avant-garde movements. Born in Dieppe on August 8, 1869, he was slightly younger than Bonnard (1867) and Vuillard (1868), the same age as Matisse, and two years older than Rouault. He entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1877 as a student to Gustav Moreau, and subsequently studied at the Académie Julian. It was there that he met Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and Albert André. Together with these colleagues, he took an avid interest in Gauguin’s ideas regarding the use of color to interpret and transform nature rather then to copy it. Valtat’s interest included both artistic precedents and contemporary trends. Renoir was a friend, whom he visited frequently. On Renoir’s advice, in 1900 Ambroise Vollard contracted to purchase Valtat’s output for ten years. Paul Signac was among his Neo-Impressionist acquaintances and something of Pointilllism was absorbed and manifests itself in Valtat’s works beginning from the early 1890s. In 1894, suffering from pulmonary consumption, Valtat went to Banyuls on the Mediterranean coast for a cure and there befriended Artistide Maillol. A year later he collaborated with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Albert André on the sets for Chariot de terre cuite, performed at the Théâtre de l’Oeuvre. It was all of these influences, with the addition of that of van Gogh, which coalesced into Valtat’s mature style. By 1895 he was painting canvases in violent tones that are today recognized as precursors of Fauvism. Though he would participate ten year later in the scandalous Salon d’Automne of 1905, in which the Fauves made their debut, he remained on the fringe of that circle. And while most of the Fauves would abandon the style after only a few years, Valtat continued to explore the use of pure color throughout his life.By 1904, when he painted Nude, Valtat had assimilated all the various influences of his early years. Echoes of Toulouse-Latrec’s flowing, Art Nouveau arabesques appear in the long auburn tresses of the figure sitting on the shore, whose hand draws her right leg to her body. Reverberations of Renoir and Maillol are present in the nude’s ample proportions and lessons learned from Impressionism are reflected in the total absence of black. The brush strokes are thick and vigorous, fraught with an expressive power that causes the landscape to melt and loose its materiality, as it so often does in Van Gogh’s last works. Color is also used to outline form, accentuating the curve of the figure’s back and the passage from thigh to ankle. Light suffuses this sensuous scene, resulting from the curved strokes of pure color juxtaposed is varied combinations that separate sky, mountains, sea and land. The nude, however, seem oblivious to the turbulence of the brushwork. Her eyes lack clear definition, and her face appears placid. It is the execution, the way the paint is applied, which conveys the work’s expressive force.