On the Beach

Three figures rest on a sandy shore in this 1899 painting by Félix Vallotton, a Swiss-French artist who belonged to the avant-garde group called the Nabis. All of them face away from us, looking out toward a flat expanse of greenish water. A woman wears a rosy pink blouse and a straw hat, a small child sports a bright red cap, and a third figure sits tucked beneath a pale yellow parasol. Since we never see their faces, we are left guessing at their thoughts as they stare at the sea.

Vallotton loved paring a scene down to its bare bones, and here the beach, water, and sky flatten into simple stripes of color, almost like painted scenery on a stage. That clean, uncluttered look drew heavily on Japanese woodblock prints, which were all the rage in Paris during those years. The stillness of the figures gives the whole picture a slightly odd, dreamlike hush. That quiet strangeness woven into an ordinary summer day is something you find again and again across Vallotton's paintings.