Tes Cheveux. Your Hair. by Louis Valtat, 1869-1952

Louis Valtat, 1869-1952
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Tes Cheveux. Your Hair.

Original etching with aquatint in black ink. December 1896. Inscribed on the verso in pencil (not Valtat's hand): Tes Cheveux, Première eau-forte par Louis Valtat, Décembre
1896. Extremely rare; edition size not known but certainly not more than c.10 impressions.

Beautiful rich and tonal impression. On stiff light cream laid paper. Excellent original condition; not restored. Full margins; sheet 10 7/8 x 7 ins. Plate: 4 5/8 x 3 1/4ins (117x81mm)

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Tes Cheveux is a beautiful and exceptional rare example of Louis Valtat?s earliest work whilst he was linked to the circle of the Nabis in the 1890?s. The use of an expressive deliberately pattern-making line, the emphasis on texture and surface, and the typical domestic ?intime? theme, show him at the most inspired period of his youth. It was a development from such works as this which was to lead him on into the expressionistic strongly coloured paintings of the Fauves when he made his name with the public.

Tes Cheveux was almost certainly Valtat?s first print (see above). No edition of it is known, and we have only ever heard of one other proof in 30 years.

Valtat studied at the Academie Julian, and it was through that school that he met and allied himself with Bonnard, Vuillard, Denis and the Nabis painters. Like them his admiration for Gauguin was profound, especially after the Cafe Volpini exhibition. It was developing Gauguin?s ideas of the expressive use of colour which led him towards a heightened tonality in his paintings. Then meeting Marquet, Vlaminck and Matisse he became, with them, one of the founders of the expressionist style dubbed Fauve.

Throughout his career Valtat was interested in printmaking, However it was a very personal interest with little thought for making formal editions or issuing his prints. Highly creative both in his first years and in the Fauve period (mostly then in woodcut) most of his prints are little known nowadays not least because (apart from a few works which were later reprinted) almost no impressions exist. Yet he was an artist with a real feeling for print media and a very high degree of creativity as Tes Cheveux, above, so clearly reveals.