Print L'Espagnole by Henri Matisse

During those same years, Jacques Villon put his personal career as a painter on hold to produce a series of engravings based on the Modern Masters for the Bernheim-Jeune gallery.

For this commission, he interpreted some fifty paintings by thirty-two artists, 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. Each print was produced in a limited edition of 200 copies, numbered and signed by Villon.

Many of these matrices were added to the collections of the Chalcographie du Louvre as they were published, enabling the dissemination of modern masterpieces in color at a time when photography was still in black and white.

Villon's engraving work reveals his talent and his keen analysis of the works, particularly from a chromatic point of view. The rendering of colors is remarkable, allowing us to glimpse not only the hues but also the rendering of the paint in the original work. This is a highly complex print, using three color plates, superimposed in successive passes through the press. In order to achieve the shades desired by Villon, extensive research into inks was carried out by the intaglio printers at the Chalcography workshop of the GrandPalaisRmn.