When he completed the course, he persuaded his parents to let him go to Paris to study art seriously. He also began to attend the drawing classes of the painter Jean-Samson Guignard, normally reserved for most advanced students, where he showed a particular skill in close observation and realism. Beginning in 1875 he attended the Collège Cantonal, graduating with a degree in classical studies in 1882. His family environment was warm but strict, in the Swiss Protestant tradition. His mother, Emma, was the daughter of a furniture craftsman. His father owned a pharmacy, and later purchased a chocolate factory. Vallotton was born into a conservative middle-class family in Lausanne, the third of four children.

He published art criticism during the 1890s, and his novel La Vie meurtrière (The Murderous Life) was published posthumously. His later paintings include highly finished portraits and nudes, and landscapes painted from memory. He produced few prints after 1901, and concentrated instead on painting. Characterized by broad masses of black and white with minimal detail, they include street scenes, bathers, portraits, and a series of ten interiors titled Intimités (Intimacies) that portray charged domestic encounters between men and women. He developed a simpler style during his association with Les Nabis during the 1890s, and produced woodcuts which brought him international recognition. His earliest paintings were influenced by Holbein and Ingres. He painted portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes, and other subjects in an unemotional, realistic style. He was an important figure in the development of the modern woodcut. Félix Edouard Vallotton was a Swiss and French painter and printmaker associated with the group of artists known as Les Nabis.

Vallotton le bon marché