One thinks of Zola-but also of Chris Ware-as these mute vignettes of passion and alienation form a disjunctive narrative of intimate sexual relations in Vallotton’s modern world. In a similarly bold move, to cancel the edition, Vallotton cut up his woodblocks and compiled a single-sheet graphic novel, sans text, featuring an evocative detail from each print in Intimacies. Money’s composition is remarkable, fully two-thirds of it given over to solid black.

Ironically, a year after he created this image, the artist left his own longtime mistress to marry a wealthy widow-for money. Vallotton places him literally on the dark side, merging his figure with the shadows. The lady in evening dress in Money seems unmoved by the disputation of her male companion, his intentions abstruse. He painted portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes. He was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut. Betrayal and blame are broadly assigned: in the Munch-like scene of The Triumph, a pitiless woman disdains her distraught husband in Extreme Measure, it’s the sobbing wife who’s devastated. Flix douard Vallotton ( French pronunciation: feliks edwa valt Decem December 29, 1925) was a Swiss and French painter and printmaker associated with the group of artists known as Les Nabis. Vallotton relied on the most reductive formal means-the simple contrast of black on white-to establish richly ambiguous scenarios, hardly clarified by suggestive titles inscribed at the bottom of each block: The Lie, The Irreparable, or Five O’Clock (that hour when French men typically met their mistresses). His brilliant graphic sense produced Intimacies, a suite of ten prints depicting couples in domestic or hotel interiors, published in 1898. From the Archives: Pierre Bonnard's Art for Art's Sake, in 1948

Félix vallotton paintings