The Red Umbrella

Original Language TitleL'Ombrelle Rouge

Artist Jacques Villon (French, 1875 - 1963)

Date1901

MediumEtching with color aquatint

DimensionsImage: 19 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches (49.53 x 39.37 cm)
Mat: 32 x 26 inches (81.28 x 66.04 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the generosity of an anonymous donor

Object numberF78-3/1

Signed(b.m., r., pencil):"Jacques Villon" (pl.,l.l.):"Jacques Villon/ 01"

On View

Not on view

Collections

Prints

Terms

Exhibition History

A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions, 1977-1987, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, October 14-December 6, 1987, no. 93, as The Red Umbrella.

Graphic Masterworks from the Permanent Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, May 23-July 25, 1993, no cat., as The Red Umbrella.

Inked in Time: Six Centuries of Printed Masterpieces, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 22-May 31, 1998, no cat., as The Red Umbrella.

The Feminine Mystique: Portraits of and by Women, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, March 27-October 8, 2006, no cat., as The Red Umbrella.

The Feminine Mystique: Portraits of and by Women, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, February 9-August 12, 2013, no cat., as The Red Umbrella.

Gallery Label

For fifteen years, Jacques Villon published his prints in popular Paris journals. During that time he also produced a series dedicated to scenes of modern urban life. Here, a fashionably dressed young woman rests on a park bench shaded by dense trees, toying with a red umbrella lying inverted in the sunlight at her feet. A strong pattern of golden light, blue shade and red accents conveys the vitality of a sunny afternoon in Paris. The woman is at one with her environment.

Villon (pseudonym) and his brothers Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) and Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918) later became innovators in the Cubist style.

Provenance

With David Tunick, Inc., New York, by February 11, 1978;

Purchased from David Tunick by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1978.

Published References

Roger Ward, ed., A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions, 1977-1987, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1987), 213, (repro.), as The Red Umbrella.

Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 213, (repro.), as The Red Umbrella.

George L. McKenna, Prints, 1460-1995 (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1996), 192-94, 295, (repro.), as The Red Umbrella (L’Ombrelle Rouge).

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 202, (repro.), as The Red Umbrella.

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