A Covered Walkway in the Grounds of the Rodin Museum

Félix Vallotton is one of my favorite artists, maybe because his work can't be assigned to any of the art movements that were contemporary to him. You may often read that he was associated with Les Nabis, but when you explore his art more, you would quickly understand that there is only one art movement Vallotton was associated with—his own art movement. 

The painting we present today was created when Vallotton was 58 (he would die of cancer in two years). In this period, after the end of World War I, Vallotton concentrated especially on flamboyantly erotic nudes, still lifes, and "composite landscapes" (landscapes composed in the studio from memory and imagination). He had persistent health problems, and he and his wife passed the winters in Cagnes-sur-Mer in Provence, where they bought a small house, and Honfleur in Normandy, where they had a summer house. This poetic and very impressionistic painting may be a reminiscence of his years spent in Paris.