Louis Valtat is a French painter on the edge of impressionism, Nabi art and Fauvism. He took painting courses at the studio of Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1886 and enrolled at the Académie Julian the following year. There he met Nabis Bonnard, Vuillard and Vallotton.

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He exhibited in 1889 at the Salon des Independants where he met Signac, Maillol and Renoir who introduced him to the dealer Ambroise Vollard. The latter buys a large part of his production from him. In 1905, he participated in the Salon d'Automne alongside Fauves Manguin, Matisse, Puy and Derain.

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Throughout his artistic career, Louis Valtat developed a distinctive style characterized by a simplification of forms and a daring use of pure color, highlighting the energy of form. His way of juxtaposing colors gives his works a unique luminosity and vibrance. He mainly paints bucolic landscapes, genre scenes, still lifes, seascapes, and portraits.

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His works are in particular present at the Orsay Museum, the MAM in Paris, the Musées des Beaux-Arts in Bernay, Besançon, Bordeaux, Caen, Nancy, Nice, the Museum of Art and History of Dreux, the Richard Anacréon Museum of Modern Art in Granville, at the Bemberg Foundation in Toulouse, as well as at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, and the Petit Palais in Geneva.