Jacques Villon
(b Damville, Eure, 31 July 1875; d
Puteaux, nr Paris, 9 June 1963).
French painter, printmaker and illustrator. The oldest of three brothers
who became major 20th-century artists, including Raymond Duchamp-Villon
and Marcel Duchamp, he learnt engraving at the age of 16 from his maternal
grandfather, Emile-Frédéric Nicolle (1830–94), a ship-broker who was also
a much appreciated amateur artist. In January 1894, having completed his
studies at the Lycée Corneille in Rouen, he was sent to study at the
Faculty of Law of the University of Paris, but within a year he was
devoting most of his time to art, already contributing lithographs to
Parisian illustrated newspapers such as Assiette au beurre. At this
time he chose his pseudonym: Jack (subsequently Jacques) in homage to
Alphonse Daudet’s novel Jack (1876) and Villon in appreciation of
the 15th-century French poet François Villon; soon afterwards this new
surname was combined with the family name by Raymond. Marcel Duchamp and
their sister Suzanne Duchamp (1889–1963), also a painter, retained the
original name. Villon’s work as a humorous illustrator dominated the first
ten years of his career, but from 1899 he also began to make serious
prints, exhibiting some for the first time in 1901 at the Société
Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. By 1903 he had sufficient reputation in
Paris to be an organizer of the first Salon d’Automne. He consciously
began to expand his media in 1904, studying painting at the Académie
Julian and working in a Neo-Impressionist manner. His printmaking style,
formerly influencd by Toulouse-Lautrec, moved towards the fashionable
elegance of Paul César Helleu.
