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Assured of a financially secure future thanks to his new wife, Vallotton no longer had any need for the income provided by his illustrations. But his marriage in 1898 to the wealthy widow Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, sister of the owners of the famous Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, placed him firmly within the social class he had previously derided. He became associated with a group of artists known as the “Nabis”, forming close friendships with its key members, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard, and for a time adopting their aesthetic. In the 1890s, he rose to fame for his witty illustrations mocking the lives of the bourgeoisie and satirising chaotic daily life in the city. But despite living through one of the most profound periods of change in the history of Western art, Vallotton would ultimately remain loyal to traditional modes of depiction, favouring the representation of reality over the artistic experimentation which led to avant-garde movements such as Impressionism and, later, Cubism and Abstraction. He remained in France for the rest of his life, becoming a citizen in 1900. Born in the Swiss city of Lausanne in 1865 and raised in a modest, Protestant household, Vallotton moved to Paris as a 16-year-old aspiring artist, situating himself at the heart of the contemporary art world. “The very singular Vallotton” is how Thadée Natanson, co-founder and editor of the cultural journal La Revue blanche, described his inscrutable friend.

He was Swiss-born, but made his name in Paris