Café Concert

Jacques Villon

1905

An etching and aquatint from 1905 in which Jacques Villon captures a single café‑concert woman with spare, calligraphic lines and a pale wash to suggest the fleeting charm of modern Parisian entertainment.

The sheet’s vast white space makes the sitter read as almost a ghost—defined by a few elegant, economical strokes and a soft yellow halo of hat and dress that gives the figure a delicate, ephemeral presence.

Created as Villon moved toward modern printmaking, this print demonstrates how reduced line and subtle aquatint tone could render contemporary life with a decorative yet modernist clarity that helped expand the expressive possibilities of graphic art.

Palette

Art Terms

Aquatint Etching Intaglio Print Portrait Modern art

Exhibitions

Jacques Villon: His Graphic Art

1953

A Jacques Villon Centennial

1975

Women of the Nineties: Fin-de-Siècle Prints

1979

Symbolism, Synthesists, and the Fin-de-Siècle

1972