Literature: Ginestet & Pouillon 275.

Provenance: Collection of Henry H. Petiet (1894-1980) (Lugt 5031);
French Private Collection (his sale at Tajan auctions, Paris, 25 Feb 2026, lot 222).

Perfect richly inked impression on ivory laid paper.

Villon’s special and highly individual use of cross-hatching to suggest light and texture anticipated etchings by Picasso and Morandi.

The eldest brother of Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon traded in his given name (Émile Méry Frédéric Gaston Duchamp) in homage to Alphonse Daudet’s novel Jack (1876) and the French medieval poet François Villon. The artist arrived in Paris in 1895. He attended Fernand Cormon’s studio on the Boulevard Clichy. In 1899, Villon joined the studio of the master printer Eugène Delâtre, where together with other young artists, he started experimenting.