VALLOTTON, Félix

In creating the series of paintings featuring interiors of his Paris apartment, Vallotton was inspired by seventeenth-century Dutch genre scenes and tried to recreate in modern era a sense of the quiet concentration of domestic life. The constant bustle of the city outside sickened the artist, which explains why this interior is so self-contained, completely cut off from the external world.

The Ball is one of the best-known paintings by F�lix Vallotton, a Swiss painter who was in close touch with the Nabis from 1891. This bird’s-eye view figures a park or public garden, places often painted by Bonnard or Vuillard.

Against the broad ochre stretch of ground and the deep shade of the trees pierced by a pale area, the running child makes a bright splash of light preceded by a dark shadow. He is wearing a yellow hat with a red ribbon, a sort of broad-brimmed boater, a mop of blond hair escaping from under the brim. His little boots are dull orange, his white smock is buttoned at the back and floats behind him in the wind. The ball he is chasing is red.

Echoing the pale mass of the child are two equally pale figures standing side by side, one blue and one white. The diminutive size of the two women suggests that they are located in the far background, yet the space seems to be flat and frontal.