Born Gaston Duchamp, Jacques Villon changed his name in 1895, when he resolved to become an artist. Sixteen years later he and his two brothers, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Marcel Duchamp, were involved in the rise of Cubism. Villon's turn to this movement marked a decisive shift in his work, which had consisted of posters lithographed in color, as well as etchings and aquatints depicting Parisian life at the turn of the century- all demonstrating affinities with the startling, fashionable images of his friend Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. After 1911, Villon's organization of form into a precise, orderly web of lines and angles dominated his production for the rest of his life. In emulation of the austerity of his own Cubist paintings and those of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, Villon limited his graphic output to black and white.

      Monsieur D. Reading represents the artist's father, Eusèbe Duchamp, his half-length figure broken into multiple crystalline facets, in the Cubist manner. In this image the ambiguity between solid and void makes it hard to distinguish the man's body from the surrounding atmosphere. A concern with movement and an interaction of light and shadow vivify the portrait.

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