Tete de Femme (Head of a Woman)
Andre Derain (1880-1954), Tete de Femme (Head of a Woman), drypoint, c. 1913, signed in pencil lower right. Reference: Adhemar 37. On cream laid BFK Rives paper with the BFK Rives Eug. Delatre watermark. In very good condition, the full sheet with full margins (a few repaired tears/nicks at outer margin edges), 12 3/8 x 8 5/8, the sheet 23 3/4 x 17 1/4 inches, archival mounting.
A fine fresh black impression of this iconic modernist/cubist image, with a strong layering of plate tone and substantial burr from the drypoint work.
During World War I much of the dealer Henry Kahnweiler’s stock (including a large number of works by artists including Derain and Picasso) was sequestered by the state and sold for war reparations in auctions between 1921-23. Derain’s prints done while Kahnweiler had his Paris gallery, from 1907-14, included only 11 impressions of the drypoint Tete de Femme, probably trial proofs and not from any edition (no edition or edition size is known).
Jane Lee, in her landmark discussion of Derain prints (Print Quarterly, March 1990) notes that in this print “the head is built on the cubist planar interruptions of a circle, but refers as much to medieval art as to cubism. In this it is close to drawings by Derain published during the War and, particularly in its medievalism, to great paintings of 1913 and 1914, such as the Portrait of Iturrino and the composition of four male figures, Les Buveurs.” She also feels that the head is related to a provincial statue of the Virgin that Derain had in his studio, which was as much a source of formal inspiration as the Fang mask that had so influenced him (as well as Picasso) a bit earlier.