MONTE CARLO BOND
signed on the plate
offset lithograph in colours on wove paper
31 x 22.5cm; 12 1/4 x 8 3/4in
43.5 x 31cm; 17 1/4 x 12 1/4in (framed)

Property from a Private Collection, West London

Provenance
William Weston Gallery, London
Purchased from the above by the mother of the present owner in September 1977

Literature
XXe siècle, Paris, 1938, no. 4 (Christmas edition)
Arturo Schwarz, The Complete Works of Marcel Duchamp, London, 1969, pp. 490-91, no. 280, catalogued

Executed in 1938 in an edition of 2000 and distributed with the periodical XXe siècle, published at Christmas that year. Duchamp originally issued the first impression in an edition of 30 in 1924, and included a third edition in The Box in a Valise in 1941 (see Schwarz ibid. p. 511, no. 311).

In 1924 Duchamp decided to try and raise money for a system he had developed for gambling at roulette by issuing bonds for 500 francs at 20% interest. Of the 30 bonds he originally printed, he only managed to sell two to friends - Jacques Doucet, the noted fashion designer and collector, and the painter Marie Laurencin. The system was a failure, Doucet was only repaid 100 francs and Laurencin nothing. The present example is from Duchamp's second edition issued in 1938. The portrait on the bond is from a photo by Man Ray of Duchamp covered in shaving soap.