The Exit — About This Work
Félix Vallotton, 1894
About the Work
A theatre audience presses towards the exit. Vallotton's emphatic black lines turn the gathering into a compressed arrangement of bodies, giving a familiar public ritual a sharply graphic presence.
The drawing was reproduced in a cultural weekly in 1894. Its relationship with printed illustration helps explain the effectiveness of strong black-and-white divisions, which remain legible even as the crowd becomes dense.
The subject is collective behaviour rather than a named individual. Differences of posture and direction animate the group, while the restricted tonal language keeps attention on the way people occupy and negotiate a shared space.
The Work
Artist: Félix Vallotton
Title: The Exit
Date: 1894
Medium: India ink and graphite on paper
Recorded dimensions: 26.4 × 36.2 cm (W × H)
Collection: Cleveland Museum of Art
Accession number: 2025.149
Print & Presentation
Palatine presentation: 40 × 50 cm Classic Frame, portrait.
The complete artwork is reproduced at its recorded scale, subject only to negligible whole-pixel rounding, without enlargement, reduction, cropping or distortion. The surrounding white presentation area accommodates the artwork within the framed presentation and is incorporated into the print rather than added as a separate mount.
Frame finishes: Black, White or Natural.
Paper & glazing: Enhanced Matte + Perspex; or Enhanced Matte + Moth-Eye.
Why Original Scale?
Most art-print shops offer the same image in a choice of Small, Medium and Large sizes. We take a different approach. For each edition, we begin with the recorded dimensions of the original work and reproduce the complete image at that scale, preserving its proportions and avoiding enlargement, reduction, cropping or distortion.
Source: Image: The Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0. Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund. 2025.149.
Care: Display in a dry interior away from prolonged direct sunlight and sources of moisture.
Notes from Palatine
If you would like to stay with us, Notes from Palatine is an occasional letter about newly added works, artists and the thinking behind the collection. There is no fixed schedule; we write when there is something worth sharing.
Palatine Editions · Original Scale Editions · palatineeditions.com