Port Maltais. Maltese Port by Jules Pascin, 1885-1930

Jules Pascin, 1885-1930
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Port Maltais. Maltese Port

Original drypoint with softground and roulette in black ink. 1928. Signed in pencil. One of a very few existing impressions printed by Pascin in 1928. (In c. 1960 there was an edition of 100 impressions printed with the authorization of Pascin?s estate.)
Ref: Hemin-Krohg-Peris-Rambert no 157.
Very rare in impressions printed by Pascin himself.

Extremely fine strongly-tonal impression, printed with a strong surface ink tone. On pale cream wove BFK Rives paper. Excellent original condition, not restored. Full margins. Sheet: 24?x19?. Plate: 16 3/8?x14 3/8? (416x363 mm).

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Pascin met Chagall almost immediately after Chagall arrived in Paris from Berlin in 1924. They became friends linked not only by inclination but also by their approach to their art. Pascin greatly admired Chagall?s very personal and expressive approach to perspective and pictorial composition. From this period on there is an increasingly free use of space in his work, the linking of the forms and figures allowed to contradict the tradition relationships so as to increase their expressive role.

Port Maltais - Maltese Port - is perhaps the finest example of this most creative period of Pascin?s work amongst his prints. It is also one of his largest etched studies. Impressions actually printed by Pascin and dating from the period that he drew the plate are extremely rare. In 1966 Pascin?s estate authorised a reprinted edition of 100 impressions which are stamp signed.

Pascin was born in Bulgaria into a partly Jewish partly nomadic gypsy background. He led a very Bohemian life as a young man, studying art in Vienna but also travelling widely. He settled in Paris for the first time in 1905 building a reputation as an illustrator and humorous artist. However, gradually the more serious side to his nature took precedence and after leaving Paris in 1914 and travelling to the USA, where he in fact became a citizen, he was increasingly admire for his caustic, witty but somehow extremely acute and personally-styled studies of city lowlife. After 1922 when he returned to Paris it was his insight into character and social situation which were uppermost, whether in city-life subjects, or in studies, as in Port Maltais of working people.