Gaston Duchamp dit Jacques Villon (1875 -1963)
Maternité, 1930, by Pablo Picasso (1881 - 1973).
During the 1920s, Gaston Duchamp, known as Jacques Villon, put his personal career and his work on hold in order to execute a series of engravings after the Modern Masters for the Bernheim-Jeune gallery. For this commission and over a period of almost ten years, he interpreted in etching some fifty paintings by thirty-two artists (sometimes several paintings per artist), most of them his contemporaries such as Matisse, Braque and Picasso, or artists belonging to the previous generation such as Manet, Renoir and Van Gogh.
Between 1925 and 1934, the artist sold and sometimes donated some of the engraved plates in this series to the Chalcographie du Louvre.
Once the two hundred copies had been printed, the Maternité plates were scratched off, as was customary. However, restoration work authorized by the artist removed the scratches and produced new prints of these copperplates, this time unsigned.
Villon's engraving work reveals his talent and fine analysis of the works, particularly from a chromatic point of view. The color rendering is remarkable, allowing us to glimpse not only the hues but also the rendering of the painting, in order to get as close as possible to the original work. From a technical point of view, the successive printing of the different plates making up Maternity enabled the artist to achieve such a rendering.
The possibility of consulting the original work, which like the other works interpreted by Villon were then part of the Bernheim-Jeune collection, enabled the artist to fully immerse himself in the work. The current location of the painting, created in 1901 and now in a private collection, is unknown. It has not been exhibited since the 1950s.
Engraved interpretation
Aquatint in color on three plates
Numbered prints on 20 copies, dated 2023, unsigned
© Adagp, Paris, 2023 © Succession Picasso 2023 © photo, 2023 RMN-Grand Palais
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