Louis Valtat

(French, 1869–1952)

Louis Valtat was a French painter and printmaker associated with the Fauvist movement of the early 20th century. Valtat’s early work, generally landscapes and street scenes, used the light touch of Impressionism and the colored dots of Pointillism along with an intense, bright palette, as in Péniches (Barges) (1892). Later in life, while suffering from tuberculosis, he spent several autumns and winters on the Mediterranean, where he intensified his use of color and began to express more Fauvist tendencies, particularly in his seascapes. However, he never fully adopted the extreme boldness of color and form that characterizes the work of the Fauve group. Born August 8, 1869 in Dieppe, France, Valtat studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Académie Julian. His fellow students and contemporaries included Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, and Édouard Vuillard, though Valtat remained separate from the Synthesist movement by which these three were influenced. He continued to paint until 1948, when he lost his sight due to glaucoma. Valtat died on January 2, 1952 in Paris, France.