Undergrowth, Felix Vallotton

Undergrowth by Felix Vallotton, fine art edition at Auvrique

Les Nabis

Complimentary Delivery · Every Size · Every Country

Felix Vallotton

Undergrowth

Les Nabis · Canvas

Undergrowth by Felix Vallotton, a canvas edition of his dense forest interior. Flat green planes, pale trunks, shadow pools. A cool, enveloping presence for rooms that sit in low light.

From^$179⁰⁰to $229.00

Canvas · 2 sizes

30x45 cm / 12x18″$179⁰⁰ 40x60 cm / 16x24″$229⁰⁰

Complimentary worldwide delivery · Made to order

Choose a Size

Complimentary Worldwide Delivery

Archival Materials

Made to Order

30 Day Returns

Undergrowth, a Forest Held at Dusk

A hallway in the early evening. The lamps are on, the daylight thinning, and this is the hour the painting was made for. Undergrowth depicts a forest floor pressed close, every leaf a flat dark shape cut against light. Trunks rise as pale verticals through the tangle. The greens run from blackened emerald to acid yellow, laid in unbroken planes that meet at hard edges. Nothing blurs. The scene feels close enough to touch, and slightly cooler than the room around it.

Vallotton was Swiss-born and joined Les Nabis in Paris in the early 1890s, a circle that included Bonnard and Vuillard. The Nabis treated painting as arrangement rather than description, flattening space into pattern and colour into decision. Vallotton pushed that furthest. His interiors and landscapes share a graphic clarity, edges drawn like woodcut lines, which is unsurprising since he was also a formidable printmaker. Undergrowth sits at the meeting point of his landscape and his graphic instinct.

Art Historical Context

Pattern Over Description, Paris in the 1890s

Les Nabis formed in the late 1880s around a simple conviction, that a picture is first of all a surface covered with colours in a chosen order. Gauguin's example at Pont-Aven gave them license to abandon illusion. They painted rooms as patterns, gardens as colour fields, figures as shapes. Vallotton, older and more austere than his companions, brought a draftsman's severity to the group. Where Bonnard softened, Vallotton cut. His landscapes and interiors from the 1890s carry the flatness the movement prized, held together by structure rather than atmosphere.

What keeps attention here is the tension between density and order. The foliage is thick, almost claustrophobic, yet every shape is deliberate, every edge decided. Shadow pools model the ground without a single gradation. Sunlit gaps open in the upper reaches and pull the eye upward through the tangle. It is a picture that behaves differently across the day, cool and quiet in morning light, deep and enveloping after dark. That range is what rewards living with it.

Editorial Insight

“A forest reduced to edges, so certain of its pattern it needs no depth.”

Artistic Analysis

Flat Planes and Hard Edges

Colour Without Gradation

At arm's length the greens reveal themselves as separate, unbroken planes. Blackened emerald sits beside acid yellow with no blending between them. Vallotton lets adjacency do the work that shading usually does. A leaf darkens not by softening but by being replaced with a darker shape. The effect is closer to cut paper than to observation, and it is what gives the surface its almost graphic authority from across the room.

Trunks as Structure

The pale verticals are the painting's skeleton. They rise through the foliage at slightly irregular intervals, breaking the horizontal drift of the leaves and giving the eye something to climb. Without them the scene would collapse into pure pattern. With them, the forest acquires depth by suggestion alone. Notice how each trunk is a single flat shape, its edges crisp, its brightness calibrated against the surrounding green.

Shadow as Composition

The lower third is knitted together by brown underbrush and pools of shadow, laid in shapes rather than tone. These dark masses anchor the composition and stop the foliage from floating. Look at how they repeat, echoing one another across the ground like notes in a rhythm. The modelling of the whole scene is done this way, by placement and contrast, never by a soft brush. It is painting as design.

Sizes and Prices for Undergrowth

Undergrowth is produced as a canvas in 2 sizes. Each is printed to order on archival stock and ships free worldwide.

Canvas · 2 sizes

30x45 cm / 12x18″$179⁰⁰ 40x60 cm / 16x24″$229⁰⁰

Own Undergrowth

Felix Vallotton, produced as a canvas and made to order. Complimentary delivery, worldwide.

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Designing with Undergrowth

This is a picture for a room that leans cool. A reading nook with a low lamp, a hallway that never quite catches the afternoon sun, a study with north light. The greens sit beautifully against oak, walnut and linen in oat or stone, and against a deep painted wall in charcoal or forest. Hang it at seated eye level in a nook, centre around 145 centimetres in a hallway. The smaller size suits a narrow wall or a corner beside a chair, close enough to read the edges. The larger one carries a hallway on its own and pairs well with a single brass or dark metal lamp below. Keep what surrounds it quiet. The painting supplies the density.

Frequently Asked Questions

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.