JACQUES VILLON
Damville (Normandy) 1875 - 1963 Puteaux
Portrait d’Acteur (Félix Barré), 1913
Portrait of an Actor (Félix Barré)
Drypoint
400 x 315 mm.; 15 3/4 x 12 3/8 inches
Signed, dated 1913 and numbered 3/32
Provenance:
Collection of Jacqueline and Bernard Gheerbrant, founders of the Librairie La
Hune at
St. Germain-des-Près in Paris.
Reference:
Auberty & Pérussaux no. 199
Ginestet & Pouillon E. 283
Notes:
1. A superb impression of this major work which many regard as Villon’s tour de
force among the artist’s Golden Section period drypoints. Shoemaker (Innes
Shoemaker, Jacques Villon and His Cubist Prints, Philadelphia Museum of Art,
2001: p. 28) refers to the dramatic effect of the drypoint in this work “as a
result of the more aggressive crossing of planes, the stark contrasts of black
and white, and the energetic linear hatchings that build the construction of
planes...Villon allowed the compositional structure of planes and volumes to
dominate the naturalistic
representation of the subject, producing a work that is far more powerful than
his Cubist
drypoints to date”.
2. The “actor” here is Félix Barré, a neighbor of Villon on the rue Lemaître in
Puteaux. The Barrés and the Villons vacationed together on the Normandy coast.
Villon had previously depicted Barré and his wife, nicknamed La Bousine,
together with Villon’s wife Gaby in a color aquatint of 1904: Sous la tente, sur
la plage (Blonville), (Ginestet & Pouillon E. 137).