Portrait du peintre Vallotton

Portrait du peintre Vallotton from 1897 at the Kunstmuseum Bern shows Vuillard depicting his Nabi colleague Félix Vallotton — Swiss-born painter, printmaker, and critic who joined the Nabis in Paris and became an important figure in the movement's graphic ambitions. Vuillard and Vallotton were close friends in the 1890s, and this portrait documents the artistic circle at its most cohesive moment. Bern's museum, appropriately given Vallotton's Swiss origins, holds this intimate record of Nabi camaraderie.

Vallotton's angular features and intense gaze are captured with a flat, precise handling that echoes his own woodcut print sensibility — Vuillard may be paying homage to his colleague's graphic method in the clarity of the figure's description. The surrounding interior is rendered with Vuillard's characteristic compressed patterning that absorbs the figure into its environment.