Les Nécrophores (The Pall Bearers)

Félix Edouard Vallotton, artist

1865–1925

Les Nécrophores (The Pall Bearers), 1891

Where object was made: Switzerland

Material/technique: woodcut

Dimensions:
Plate Mark/Block Dimensions (Height x Width): 145 x 252 mm
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 244 x 324 mm
Plate Mark/Block Dimensions (Height x Width): 5 11/16 x 9 15/16 in
Sheet/Paper Dimensions (Height x Width): 9 5/8 x 12 3/4 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 14 x 19 in

Credit line: Museum purchase

Accession number: 1967.0064

Not on display

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Label texts

Exhibition Label:
"Printed Art and Social Radicalism," Jun-2002, Stephen Goddard
Vallotton contributed his woodcuts to a broad array of jounals in the 1890s. Some, but not all, of these journals were radical in nature, such as Les Temps nouveaux [New Times] and L'Assiette au beurre [The Plate of Butter]. Correspondence between Vallotton and Jean Grave, editor of the anarchist Les Temps nouveaux, leaves little doubt about the artist's anarchist leanings (in one letter he requests that Grave send him a copy of Kropotkin, one of the primary anarchist theorists). While nothing in Les Nécrophores makes a political reading necessary, the print was done close in time to other images in which political violence is implicit (for example, The Anarchist, The Charge, The Demonstration). The Spencer Museum has none of these clearly political woodcuts by Vallotton, but we might ask if Les Nécrophores recalls someone who died fighting for a radical cause.