Jacques Villon (Gaston Duchamp)
Le Potin (The Gossip)
1904
Ginestet-Pouillon 96
Third state of three
Drypoint and aquatint
Published by Edmond Sagot, Paris.
16 5/17 × 22 5/8 in. (41.5 x 57.5 cm)
$13,500
A very beautiful and fresh impression in olive green ink on laid paper. Numbered and signed in pencil and with the blind stamp of Sagot (Lugt 2254). Full margins. Edition of 50.
Jacques Villon's long and prolific printmaking career took several radical stylistic turns. His early body of work (over 200 prints and posters between 1895 and 1910!) consisted primarily of genre scenes of the Parisian life at the turn of the century and was influenced by Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul César Helleu. Looking at this plate depicting fashionable ladies of society bantering in an opulent Parisian interior, it is hard to imagine that Jacques Villon would embrace Cubism just a few years later.
Yvonne Bon, the wife of Jacques Villon's brother, the sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon, posed as the model for the four women in the subject.
This plate is one of the greatest illustrations of what the late William S. Lieberman, Curator of Prints at the Museum of Modern Art, New York had to say about Jacques Villon's pre-Cubist prints: "At their best his color etchings and aquatints suggest the boldness and brilliance of Toulouse-Lautrec touched with the elegance and charm of Paul Helleu".
Literature:
W. S. Lieberman, 'Jacques Villon, His Graphic Art', New York, 1953.
C. de Ginestet, C. Pouillon, 'Jacques Villon, Les Estampes et les Illustrations, Catalogue Raisonné', Paris, 1979.
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