Flowers and Strawberries
Felix Vallotton's still life of strawberries and blossoms, reproduced as a framed edition. Flat colour, firm outlines, a quiet red that warms a room without raising its voice.
From$24900to $699.00Flowers and Strawberries, Painted Flat
A strawberry catches the light first. Its skin is a single red, lacquered and unbroken, edged in dark line so clean the fruit reads almost like a seal. Around it, petals stay soft while everything else refuses to soften. The bowl, the cloth, the table, the wall behind, each is one flat field of colour. Vallotton does not model depth here. He arranges it. The eye moves from berry to blossom to edge of table as if reading a sentence written in paint.
Vallotton joined the Nabis in the early 1890s, working alongside Bonnard and Vuillard, and the group's taste for compressed space and decorative surface stayed with him for life. He was also a sharp satirical draftsman and a painter of nudes and interiors with a cool, unsettling calm. This still life shows the gentler side of that discipline. Nothing is sentimental. The flowers are shapes, the fruit is geometry, and the charm comes from how firmly he refuses to charm.
Still Life After Impressionism
By the 1890s, still life had moved past the Impressionist shimmer. The Nabis, a young circle of painters in Paris, treated a table of fruit the way a designer treats a panel, as a surface to be organised rather than a moment to be caught. Gauguin's example hung over them, with its broad zones of colour and heavy outline. Vallotton absorbed all of it and went further than most, flattening space until a domestic scene looked almost like woodcut illustration, a trade he knew from his own printmaking.
What holds attention is the tension between order and appetite. The strawberries are food, rendered with the detachment of a poster designer, yet the red is so saturated the mouth responds before the mind does. The blossoms above carry the only softness in the picture, and that small concession makes the hardness around them feel deliberate. Living with it daily, the eye keeps returning to that negotiation. It is a picture that rewards the tenth look more than the first.
Line, Plane and Lacquered Colour
The Outlined Contour
At arm's length the dark outlines are the first thing to study. They vary in weight, thinning where a leaf turns, thickening along the bowl's rim, and they do all the drawing the shading refuses to do. Each berry is closed like a stencil. This is the Nabi method at its most confident, contour carrying form so colour can stay pure and flat. Up close the lines feel hand-set, not mechanical, with small hesitations that give the picture its pulse.
Colour as Surface
The reds are laid in single passes, unblended, so each fruit reads as one saturated shape rather than a sphere lit from one side. Greens sit beside them as cut forms, the leaves no more modelled than the petals. The tabletop and the background meet in a clean boundary of two fields, which pushes the still life forward with almost no depth cues. The effect is closer to enamel or inlay than to observation, and that is the point.
Composition and Restraint
The arrangement is deliberately off balance. The bowl crowds the table's edge, the bouquet rises just behind it, and the empty cloth does the compositional work a background would normally do. Vallotton leaves generous silence in the picture, pale field above pale field, so the small cluster of red and green carries all the weight. It is a lesson in how little a painting needs when every shape is placed with intent.
Sizes and Prices for Flowers and Strawberries
Flowers and Strawberries is produced as a framed poster in 3 sizes. Each is printed to order on archival stock and ships free worldwide.
Own Flowers and Strawberries
Felix Vallotton, produced as a framed poster and made to order. Complimentary delivery, worldwide.
View the EditionDesigning with Flowers and Strawberries
This belongs in a kitchen or dining room, anywhere food and flowers already share the table. The pale ground and hard red suit a white or soft grey wall, and it sits well above a sideboard, an open shelf, or a breakfast nook bench. Hang it at eye level, centre around 150 cm from the floor, and keep the surrounding objects plain so the flat colour does the talking. The smaller size suits a galley kitchen or a narrow stretch between windows. The larger formats hold their own above a dining table or across from a doorway, where the clean outlines read from across the room. Warm wood, linen and ceramic are natural company. Chrome and glass are not.
What kind of frame comes with this piece?
Every print ships in a hardwood frame built from conservation-grade materials, chosen to sit quietly behind the artwork rather than compete with it, while still protecting the print itself.
Is shipping really free, and how long will it take to arrive?
Shipping is free on every order, everywhere, with no minimum spend. Most orders arrive within 5 to 10 business days depending on destination.
Are archival materials used in production?
They are. Each print is produced on archival paper and finished with UV-protective acrylic glazing to slow color fade over the years.
Can I return this if it isn't right for the space?
Yes. Returns are accepted within 30 days of delivery for a full refund or an exchange, no questions asked.
More Works by Felix Vallotton
Further works by Felix Vallotton in the Auvrique collection.
Sources & Further Reading
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Bring Vallotton Home
Printed to order on archival stock, delivered worldwide at no cost, ready to hang within 5 to 10 business days.
View the Edition