Street Scene in Paris

Painted in the late 19th century, “Street Scene in Paris” is a creation of Felix Vallotton. It is an oil and gouache piece on cardboard, which is currently held in the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Vallotton, who developed his own unique style of painting, is now considered to be among the most original artists of his time. His body of work encompasses landscapes, portraits, satirical prints, interior narratives, and still lifes. Vallotton’s works were influenced by his early admiration for Northern Renaissance painters. Furthermore, the asymmetry and decorative flatness of Japanese prints drove his move towards stylized simplification. Besides this, his proximity to the Nabis, which was a semi-secret, semi-mystical group of young artists, introduced him to synthetic color and symbolic composition. However, he deviated from their spiritualism in favor of irony and emotional restraint. “Street Scene in Paris” is a prime example of Vallotton’s outstanding contribution to the graphic arts in Paris. The painting captures a busy Parisian boulevard viewed from an elevated perspective, as though observed from a balcony or nearby window. Figures in turn-of-the-century attire populate the scene, alongside carriages and a dog, arranged in a way that appears random yet is carefully ordered. In the painting, Vallotton employs the hallmarks of the Nabis graphic style, including flat surface patterning, two-dimensionality, and simplification of detail, drawing from Japanese woodblock prints. Painted during Vallotton’s most active Nabis phase, the painting reflects his sharp visual critique of bourgeois society, where he contrasts the struggling workers with the fashionable women in bright colors. The cropped perspectives and flattened forms in his painting echoes the ukiyo-e prints he collected after the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, while the muted earth tones contrast with the striking pedestrian silhouettes.