Les Femmes de Thrace – Jacques Villon, 1907

JACQUES VILLON AND THE MYTH OF ORPHEUS

“Les Femmes de Thrace” [The Women of Thrace], etching made by Jacques Villon in 1907. Signed in pencil and numbered 13/30. Size: 19.7 x 14.5 cm..

In this composition Jacques Villon turns to classical mythology. The title refers to the women of Thrace, who play a violent role in the myth of Orpheus. According to the story, Orpheus, after the death of his wife Eurydice, was attacked and killed by Thracian women or Maenads.

Villon, however, does not present a literally developed mythological scene. The image remains fragmentary: at left stands a dark figure, in the centre is a figure on her knees, and at right a woman appears to fall backwards. The relationship between the figures is deliberately left open, but their poses suggest threat, disruption and physical tension.

The etching belongs to the same experimental period as L’aide gracieuse. The figures are not firmly outlined, but built up from short, free hatching, some of which continues into the background. As a result, the scene is not presented as a finished narrative, but as a moving image in which line, posture and spatial effect play the leading role.

Jacques Villon (1875–1963), born Gaston Duchamp and the elder brother of Marcel Duchamp, would in the years after 1907 develop into one of the important graphic artists within French Cubism. Les Femmes de Thrace is therefore of interest as an early transitional print: the subject is still recognisable, but the loose hatching, sharper diagonals and interweaving of figures and background already point ahead to the avant-garde visual language of his later Cubist work.

Price: Euro 750,-