Gabrielle Vallotton à sa table de toilette

"Gabrielle Vallotton à sa table de toilette" (Gabrielle Vallotton at her Dressing Table) of 1899, worked on cardboard and held at the Kunsthaus Zürich, is one of the earliest depictions of Félix Vallotton's wife, painted in the year of their marriage. Gabrielle was the daughter of Alexandre Bernheim of the Bernheim-Jeune gallery, and the marriage brought Vallotton financial stability that transformed his professional life. The dressing table subject positions Gabrielle in a private, feminine space of self-preparation — the same territory as the mirror subjects and the half-nude works, spaces of female self-presentation observed from outside. The year 1899 places this work at a transitional moment: Vallotton moving from the Nabi woodcut celebrity of the 1890s toward the more considered, intimate painted interiors of the 1900s. The cardboard support, common in his earlier works, was used for studies and smaller-scale investigations rather than monumental canvases.

Oil on cardboard with the matte, absorbent surface quality this support produces. The dressing table setting — mirror, personal objects, intimate space — is described with Vallotton's flat, economical manner. Gabrielle's figure is observed directly and without ceremony, the domestic setting rendered with the same detachment as his other interior figures.