The archive / Les Nabis / The Ball
The Ball
Félix Vallotton · 1865–1925
3 variations + a matched story print, every standard frame ratio. sRGB · up to 300 DPI · personal-use license.
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Sizes in the download
Print-ready files at every standard frame ratio below — the full image, nothing cropped:
Every size here is print-ready, sharp at viewing distance. Up close, the print is crispest at 300 DPI up to about 12×16″; at larger sizes the cream mat carries the print to the frame while the painting sits at its sharpest within.
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The work
A child becomes a splash of light, seen from above.
The ground tips up toward you. Vallotton set his vantage high above the park, a bird's-eye angle that splits the scene into a broad stretch of sunlit ochre on top and the deep shade of trees below. Against that seam the running child reads as a bright splash of light, a dark shadow thrown ahead of it. Two zones, one small figure crossing between them.
Look closer
The space refuses to settle into depth.
Up in the sunlit zone, two pale figures stand side by side, women in blue and white. They are tiny, which should place them far in the background. But the rest of the picture stays flat and frontal, so the distance never quite arrives. You read the size as depth and the surface as a plane at once. The eye keeps adjusting.
Why it matters
A Nabi who subtracted instead of decorating.
His fellow Nabis Vuillard and Bonnard packed garden scenes like this one with ornamental pattern. Vallotton went the other way, paring the elements down and smoothing the paint into what has been called 'a material parallel to reality.' Behind the choice sit Japanese prints, the Neoclassical draftsman Ingres, and photography. Signed and dated 'F. VALLOTTON 99' at lower right, the work appears in his own 1899 account book as number 415.
The file & the facts
- Title
- The Ball
- Artist
- Félix Vallotton
- Year
- 1899
- Medium
- Oil on board
- Original
- 48 × 61 cm
- Collection
- Musée d'Orsay, Paris
- Rights
- Public-domain painting · faithful reproduction (PD-Art) · Musée d'Orsay, Paris — RF 1977 353. Digital image: Google Art Project via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
- File
- sRGB · JPEG · 150–300 DPI
