Engravings

In the 1920s-30s, painter and engraver Gaston Duchamp, known as Jacques Villon (1875-1963), commissioned a series of engravings by the Modern Masters from the Berheim-Jeune gallery, one of which is based on Avenue du Bois by Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), a painter who was strongly influenced by Fauvism in his early career, and who became famous for his often provocative portraits of women. Here, he breaks somewhat with the portraits that made him famous, concentrating above all on the impersonal elegance of his subjects, walkers in the Bois de Boulogne, where he lived at the time. However, his skillful use of color is perfectly rendered in the print.
Through this virtuoso etching, Villon reveals his 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 paint, in order to get as close as possible to the original work. It was the successive printing of the four plates making up Avenue du Bois that enabled the artist to achieve such a result.

Dimensions of the sheet (cm): H. 65 × W. 50
Dimensions of the plate (cm): H. 48.5 × W. 37