Yvonne D. de face, 1913

Yvonne D., Frontal View

Drypoint: edition of 28

550 x 415 mm.; 21 3/4 x 16 3/8 inches

Signed and numbered: Jacques Villon 9/28

References:

Auberty & Pérussaux no.195

Ginestet & Pouillon E. 281

Notes:

1. This is one of Villon’s three large-format, drypoint-portraits of 1913. The others are: Portrait of a Young Woman (the least "cubist" one, close in technique to Musiciens chez le Bistro of 1912 and perhaps datable to late 1912) and Yvonne D. de profil.

2. Shoemaker (Innis Howe Shoemaker, Jacques Villon and His Cubist Prints, Philadelphia Museum of Art, June-September, 2001: p. 26) has written a brilliant analysis of Yvonne D. de face, part of which reads as follows:

Of Villon’s three monumental drypoint portraits ... from 1913, the present work is the one in which he used the most radical application of pyramidal construction, which was ultimately derived from his reading of Leonardo da Vinci’s Trattato della pittura [Treatise on Painting]...Villon introduced a new device for suggesting volume in Yvonne D. de face. Whereas in his previous prints he had more consistently outlined the geometric segments into which figure and background are divided, in this drypoint he used the outlines sparingly. It is frequently the simple juxtaposition of parallel lines in different directions that creates the boundaries between the segments, so that they appear as volumetric planes. In some areas the planes join one another at angles, creating a true construction of geometric volumes projecting into space, which suggests that they are being seen simultaneously from more than one point of view. In this respect, Yvonne D. de face surpasses the two other [large] portraits [of 1913], for Villon has employed a purely graphic technique not only to achieve a clearer integration of figure and space but also to express the idea of Cubist simultaneity... To define the idea of "Cubist simultaneity", Shoemaker refers to Daniel Robbins’ text: "Extending Cubism", Print Collector’s Newsletter, vol. 13, no. 1,March, 1982, p.7 : "..the concurrence and coexisting plurality of points of view, organized into a plastic whole".

3. There often is a reference to Villon’s "three portraits of Yvonne", including this one. However, one of these:"Portrait of a Young Woman", is actually the portrait of Suzanne Duchamp. In a private US collection, there is an exceptional impression of this latter work, dedicated in the hand of Jacques Villon to the first Villon cataloguer, Pérussaux: "à Pérussaux, ce portrait de Suzanne" . Thus, the third, large, drypoint-portrait of 1913 is of Suzanne rather than of Yvonne.