Terms and conditions of use
The suicide
(Le Suicide)
1894
- Medium
- woodcut
- Measurements
- 22.6 × 17.9 cm (block) 32.9 × 25.3 cm (sheet)
- Catalogue/s Raisonné
- Vallotton & Goerg 143.b
- Edition
- ed. 70/90 (nos 31-90 second state)
- Inscription
- inscribed in blue pencil l.r.: F Vallotton 70
printed in ink (in image) l.l.: FV
printed in ink (in image) l.r: LE SUICIDF - Accession Number
- 1577-5
- Departments
- International Prints / International Prints and Drawings
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased, 1966
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of the Joe White Bequest - Gallery location
- Not on display
- About this work
-
In the late nineteenth century, French newspapers began publishing faits divers – brief accounts of unusual events involving ordinary people, such as brawls, suicides and crimes. With their dark subject matter and concise approach to storytelling, Félix Vallotton’s woodcuts draw influence from this popular form of reportage. Much like the crowd gathered on the bridge, the viewer contemplating The suicide takes on the role of badaud – a nineteenth-century urban social type that roughly translates to ‘gawker’. In the 1890s the voyeuristic interest of the badaud in social turmoil was seen by the left as a testament to the desensitising effects of modern society under capitalism. Vallotton’s prints challenge viewers to choose between accepting the role of passive bystander or becoming an active agitator for social change.
- Subjects (general)
- Cityscapes Structures Violence
- Subjects (specific)
- arches bridges (built works) deaths night rivers suicides
