BANGLADESH, Jan. 15 -- The Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently presenting the work of Felix Vallotton, an artist who has been largely neglected relative to his contemporaries, such as Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. This makes the present exhibition all the more welcome, and fascinating. Vallotton's work unquestionably merits the renewed attention - his paintings possess a mysterious quality, narrative appeal, and attention to detail, as well as invoke a delicious sense of irony and wit.
Born in the Swiss town of Lausanne on the shores of Lake Geneva in 1865, Vallotton displayed early an ability to draw from life; and at sixteen he arrived in Paris to study painting at the Academie Julian. A self-portrait at the age of twenty reve...