L'Averse (The Shower)
1894
Medium
lithograph (zinc) on yellow wove paper
Dimensions
overall: 22.8 x 31.3 cm (9 x 12 5/16 in.)
Classification
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Rosenwald Collection
Accession Number
1952.8.484
Art Historical Context
Félix Vallotton’s *L’Averse (The Shower)* captures a moment of everyday life in1890s Paris. Created in 1894, the print reflects the artist’s keen observation of urban experience during the Belle Époque, when modernization brought both excitement and quiet unease to city streets. Vallotton, a Swiss-born painter and printmaker associated with the Nabis group, often infused ordinary scenes with subtle psychological tension and crisp formal design. The work is executed as a zinc lithograph on yellow wove paper, a medium that allowed Vallotton to achieve bold contrasts and fluid lines without the ...
About the Artist
Félix Vallotton
Félix Vallotton (1865–1925) was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, into a comfortable middle-class family, and moved to Paris in 1882 to enroll at the Académie Julian, where he studied under the portrait painter Jules Joseph Lefebvre and the history painter Gustave Boulanger. Paris would remain his home for the rest of his life, and he became a French citizen in 1900 following his marriage to the art ...