Rating and value of Jacques Villon's works

Considered one of the most important theorists of his time, Jacques Villon (1875-1963) was the founder of the Section d'Or. His price fluctuates but remains high overall on the auction market, and his works arouse a special enthusiasm among collectors.

If you own a work by or based on the artist Jacques Villon and would like to know its value, our state-approved experts and auctioneers can help you.

Our specialists will carry out a free appraisal of your work, and provide you with a precise estimate of its value on today's market. Then, if you wish to sell your work, we will guide you towards the best possible means of obtaining the best possible price.

Artist's rating and value

Jacques Villon is a versatile artist, particularly in the field of synthetic cubism, and a highly regarded painter and engraver on the art market. Since the 2000s, his value has exploded, making him a sure thing on the international market, and he is highly prized by both French and American buyers.

Villon's most sought-after works are his cubist and abstract canvases.

His predominantly red Cubist composition L'Acrobate, dating from 1913, sold for €945,000 at Sotheby's in 2004, while its estimate was between €411,000 and €575,400.

Order of value from the most basic to the most prestigious

Jacques Villon's style

Villon's early career was very complex. Introduced to engraving by his grandfather, he initially worked as a newspaper illustrator, producing a few caricatures. In Montmartre, he rubbed shoulders with some of the Cubists, but soon moved away from this school to Puteaux, because, as he himself said, he was not productive.

Continuing his work as an illustrator, he developed a unique style characterized by strong mathematical influences. Drawing on the theories of Leonardo and Fibonacci, as well as established scientific principles such as the Golden Number, he constructs his own system of logic.

Villon's style is now complete. The space of the painting becomes the color-space of shadow, but without dirt, always through transparencies, and always with a central plane as hinge, and when this central plane becomes shadow, everything changes, everything has to start again.

Thanks to his research, Villon was able to distinguish between light color and tube color, demonstrating his perfect mastery of the color wheel:

"Not only are tube colors different from light colors, but there's a complete difference in the behavior of tube and light colors.

So, for example, once I've set the very first tone, which is taken from the local tone, I don't know what colors will follow. It's not up to me to choose them.

The color wheel will tell me, because the color wheel, on which the shades of light and their nuances are perfectly ordered, is calculated in such a way as to be able to indicate how these shades relate to each other.

So, once I've used the color wheel to pick out the two colors next to my first tone, all I have to do is repeat the same operation.

First I take one of these two colors, then the other, and each, according to its place in the color wheel, calls up two new colors on the canvas.

In this way, all the colors are placed in the painting according to their interference with the light, and the surface covered by each color depends on the arrangement of the planes in relation to the light source.

There are always different planes, aren't there, one that moves forward, another that follows, a third that is further away... On the canvas they overlap, but it's always their intersections that reveal them and assign each color a precise place."

Jacques Villon's creative process

Starting from two intertwined geometric planes, Villon builds his canvas by adding a superimposition of triangular shapes - resulting in a three-dimensional composition.

By first adding the foreground and background, then adding his pyramidal vision and multiplying the whole by the infinity of lines of force, the artist obtains his three-dimensional composition.

Thus, by stretching the shapes and superimposing the varied cut-outs, we move away from a brilliant, descriptive semantics towards the description of a mechanical force, far superior to the spiritual force of internal organic tensions found in the cubists of the time.

The use of this double semantics (that of engraving and that of the avant-gardes) allows for a particularly accurate and pertinent analysis of the artist's work, which contrasts with the almost expressionist reading of the form that took place during the interwar period.

Then there's light, the key to understanding the artist's entire production. Light, which is no longer concrete but perfectly metaphysical, raises a number of issues. It is no longer defined as an effect that might impose itself on the viewer, but as a structuring function of the work.

Starting with a single tone, and never having yielded to the temptation of monochromy, Villon links color and light with the help of the chromatic circle.

Once he has set the first tone, he systematically uses the color wheel to find out which colors will follow. Villon would say, "It's not up to me to choose them". By understanding and analyzing this systematic use of the color wheel, we come to the conclusion that color becomes an assigned weight.

For Villon, the painting is a recreation of the thing seen. His work is governed by a desire to return to order, with no room for chance. Masses of color fragment into facets thanks to regulating lines, and the drawing becomes the conclusion of the painting.

The whole process, which is purely creative and gestural, enables the synthesis of movement to be expressed through a certain continuity, rather than a movement broken down into successive leaps.

Villon and engraving

Initially trained as an engraver, then influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in his early years and the production of press drawings, not by choice but by necessity, Villon really found himself from the 1900s onwards, experimenting with different ideas in engraving and then painting.

Unlike Picasso, who starts from primitive art, or Braque, who questions the distribution of space in the painting based on the paintings of CézanneVillon's entry into Cubism began with engraving. The hatching specific to this medium led him to a concept that would structure the whole of his work: the mechanization of the stroke.

In this way, Villon joins the major philosophical issues raised in the same years by art historians such as Goodman and Gombricht.

The latter, particularly in the context of the upheavals associated with the New York avant-garde, raise a number of questions about the viewer's visual reception and the status of the work of art.

Vallier explains how Jacques Villon seized on cubism as a research lever to solve problems that have always occupied the history of art: how to construct a canvas, how to attract the viewer's eye, and above all to understand what happens during the viewer's visual reception. Engraving was to be a great help in this process.

The historiography of cubism in the 20th century

The historiography of twentieth-century Cubism is a complex and peculiar one, since from the outset the movement was in a state of flux, constantly innovating, and its leading artists did not necessarily agree on its principles.

Indeed, beyond the oppositions between artists, there are two opposing schools: the Montmartre school, to which Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque belong, today the best-known works of French Cubism - and the Montmartre school, to which Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque belong, today the best-known works of French Cubism.

and Puteaux, which included artists such as Gleizes, Kupka, Metzinger, Picabia and Jacques Villon. Otherwise known as the Golden Section Group, under Villon's influence, in reference to the golden ratio.

The Puteaux school was fairly marginalized on the French and international scene, overwhelmed by the glory of Picasso and the genius of Braque, who was a major influence on art historians - the latter setting himself up as a precursor and major theoretician of the Cubist movement.

However, art historians such as Jean Adhémar, Jean Révol (who wrote a book revealing the similarities between Braque and Villon) and Dora Vallier were keen to study the context of Cubism, placing the two schools in tension. 

His signature

Not all of Jacques Villon's works are signed. What's more, there are many copies: that's why expertise is so important.

Appraising your property

If you own a work by Jacques Villon, don't hesitate to request a free appraisal by filling in our online form.

A member of our team of experts and certified auctioneers will contact you to provide an estimate of the market value of your work.

If you are considering selling your work, our specialists will also guide you through the various alternatives available to obtain the best possible price, taking into account market trends and the specific features of each work.