Portrait of Marthe Mellot

Marthe Mellot was a French actress associated with the Symbolist Théâtre de l'Oeuvre, which staged Ibsen, Maeterlinck, and Jarry's "Ubu Roi" in the 1890s. Her connection to the avant-garde theatrical world made her a natural subject for Vallotton, who was himself deeply embedded in the Symbolist and Nabi cultural networks of Paris. This 1898 portrait, held at the Kunsthaus Zürich, depicts her with Vallotton's customary restraint: no theatrical gesture, no costume or prop that identifies her profession, simply the woman observed with the same formal economy he brought to all his subjects. The portrait's year places it within his most concentrated Nabi period, when the influence of Japanese prints and Gauguin was strongest. The decision to paint an actress without theatricality is characteristically Vallotton: he consistently refused the conventions of his subjects, whether bourgeois convention in his interiors or professional convention in his portraits.

Oil on canvas with the flat, smooth surface characteristic of Vallotton's late 1890s work. The colour palette is constrained, relying on a limited range of tones to achieve the portrait's psychological concentration. Outlines are firmly drawn, echoing the linear character of his concurrent woodcut production.