Damville (Normandy) 1875 - 1963 Puteaux

La lecture sur l’herbe (proof), 1910-1911

Reading on the Grass

Soft-ground in black and cream

304 x 385 mm.; 12 x 15 1/2 inches

Signed

Provenance:

Collection of Jacqueline and Bernard Gheerbrant, founders of the Librairie La Hune at St. Germain-des-Près in Paris.

Reference:

Auberty & Pérussaux no. 168 (but reproduced as 167)

Ginestet & Pouillon E. 254

Notes:

1. An extremely rare work. Ginestet & Pouillon note only "quelques épreuves" (only "a few proofs"). One of these proofs (345 x 450 mm.), apparently a unique impression before the plate was reduced in size, is in a U. S. private collection and is annotated in the hand of Villon: 2e Ètat - lecture sur l’herbe (2 épreuves) - figures teintés [sic] au pastel (2nd State, Reading on the Grass - two impressions - figures tinted with pastel). This work was never published and, from Villon’s own notation (which could refer to that proof as a "2nd State" only or more probably is stating that this 2nd State to follow was printed in only two impressions), appears to exist in a total of only three impressions, including the present one. Another of these three or so impressions (identical to the dimensions of this impression) was in the exhibition Hommage à Jacques Villon, Sagot-Le Garrec, Paris, 1975: no. 17 (repr.). There it was acquired by Charles S. N. Parent who subsequently donated the work to the Musée du Québec (Jacques Villon : La Donation Charles S. N. Parent, text Denis Martin, Musée du Québec, 1992: no. 45 and repr. on p. 109).

2. From 1907 onwards, Villon experimented with increasingly abstract volumes and masses. This new direction in Villon’s art was reaffirmed in a number of his prints such as this Lecture sur l’herbe, but was less evident in the artist’s paintings of these same years.