"There is no doubt that 1932 marks the peak of fever pitch intensity and achievement, a year of rapturous masterpieces that reach a new and unfamiliar summit in both his painting and sculpture."
Among the representations of ardor and desire in the canon of twentieth-century art, Picasso’s sensuous depictions of his lover and muse Marie-Thérèse Walter reign supreme. Executed in 1932 at the pinnacle of Picasso’s impassioned affair, Femme à la montre exists as one of the most resolved and complex depictions from this highly charged year.
The rapturous period from which Femme à la montre originates has been described by the artist’s biographer John Richardson as Picasso’s annus mirabilis or ‘year of wonders.’ In 1932, Picasso worked at a feverish pace, ceaselessly inspired by his new muse’s presence and the longing felt in her absence. Utterly consumed by his amour fou—the Surrealist notion of an obsessional, vortex-like desire—each work from this period reads like an entry in a diary, documenting the pair’s evolving relationship. Among the artist’s 1932 works, it is the monumental canvases like Femme à la montre, which unapologetically announce Marie-Thérèse’s presence, that are most widely acclaimed for their singular importance in Picasso's oeuvre.
At the same time, the occasion of Picasso’s fiftieth birthday in October 1931 had stirred something within the artist as he confronted his own legacy. Though Picasso was widely regarded as one of the greatest painters of the day, his closest artistic rival Henri Matisse had garnered wide acclaim in the 1920s for his ornate Odalisques, while Picasso's own work, which vacillated between latent Cubist and Neoclassical idioms, had at times confounded critics. Furthermore, the sweeping Matisse retrospectives, first at Galeries Georges Petit in 1931, and later that year at New York's Museum of Modern Art (the institution's first ever monographic exhibition) proved a sort of gauntlet thrown down for Picasso. Some questioned whether the celebrated Father of Cubism would soon be relegated to the past. It was in this pivotal moment in Picasso's career that Femme à la montre was created.
The previous two decades had witnessed the artist rising from the bohemian ranks of Montmartre to a tony studio on rue La Boétie, with his marriage to Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova in 1918 only adding to his bourgeois presentation. Behind the façade, however, Picasso had grown restless in his work and marriage. In 1927, a chance encounter outside the Galeries Lafeyette with the seventeen-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter set in motion one of the greatest love affairs of Picasso’s life. Taken at once with the young woman, Picasso approached Marie-Thérèse, stating "I am Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together’” (Marie-Thérèse quoted in Exh. Cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Picasso and the Weeping Women, 1994, p. 143). Shortly thereafter, the two embarked upon an affair which would define a decade of the artist's production.
Picasso’s infatuation took on near-mythic proportions, the likeness of Marie-Thérèse spilling out onto canvas after canvas, in sculpture and on paper. Due to the age difference and Picasso’s marriage to Olga, their relationship remained a secret and was hidden even from the artist’s innermost circle of friends. As a result, Marie-Thérèse’s identity is hidden in Picasso’s earliest works, obscured by his Surreal biomorphic interpretations, hinted at in shadowy profiles or tantalizingly suggested in the still lifes which conceal the initials ‘MT.’ As Françoise Gilot would later write, Marie-Thérèse was “the luminous dream of youth, always in the background but always within reach, that nourished his work… Marie-Thérèse, then, was very important to him as long as he was living with Olga because she was the dream when the reality was someone else” (quoted in Exh. Cat., London, Tate, Picasso 1932 - Love, Fame, Tragedy, 2018, p. 18).
Their furtive liaison resulted in scores of coded images of his lover, eventually culminating in the undeniably bold and sensuous portraits of 1932 at the apex of their relationship. His muse’s potent mix of physical appeal and sexual naïveté had an intoxicating effect on Picasso, and his rapturous desire for the young woman brought about a wealth of images that have been praised as the most erotic and emotionally uplifting compositions of his long career. Augmented by the forbidden nature of their years-long relationship, Picasso’s unleashed passion is nowhere more apparent than in his 1932 depictions of his muse.
"...My dear MT... I love you more than the taste of your mouth, more than your look, more than your hands, more than your whole body, more and more and more and more than all my love for you will ever be able to love."
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Guitareoil and charcoal on canvas
31 7/8 by 31 7/8 in. 81 by 81 cm.
Musée Picasso, Paris
© 2023 ESTATE OF PABLO PICASSO / ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK
Picasso’s paintings from this time abound with the traits and subtleties of his new muse; replete with Marie-Thérèse’s sensuous curves, golden hair and Grecian features, these works serve as an ode to his clandestine lover. It was in a series of monumental paintings executed in 1932 that Picasso at last announced Marie-Thérèse as an extraordinary new presence in both his life and his art. In June of that year, a sprawling retrospective of the artist’s work opened at Galeries Georges Petit to a rapt and abundant audience—the sort of blockbuster-like crowds that were unheard-of at the time. Picasso was directly involved in the organization of the exhibition and selected the works to be hung, including many of the recent large-scale portraits of Marie-Thérèse. It was on this occasion in Paris that Olga, upon seeing Picasso’s numerous references to another woman’s face and figure, was alerted to the new presence in her husband’s life. Until the exhibition, Picasso’s relationship with Marie-Thérèse had been a secret affair, the evidence of which he had kept sealed away at the studio he maintained in Boisgeloup.
In the seclusion of his new country home and expansive studio at Boisgeloup, the voluptuous figure of Marie-Thérèse took center stage. Converted from a stable, Picasso’s new studio at last allowed enough space for his growing sculpture practice. The monumental plaster busts which resulted from this intensive period in turn inspired the increasingly dynamic and biomorphic figures that define his 1932 canvases.
Executed in August of that year, Femme à la montre depicts a smartly dressed young woman seated in an armchair against a striking blue background. Back in Boisgeloup after the opening of his retrospective in Paris, Picasso enjoyed a calmer environment free of pre-exhibition stresses and time constraints. Consequently, the present work displays a heightened level of detail and pictorial complexity compared to related compositions from earlier in the year, resulting in one of the most compelling portrayals of his Golden Muse ever created.
Rendered in volumetric curves and set against geometric delineations of her dress and chair, Marie-Thérèse conveys a sense of poise and assuredness. Her gaze is directed at the viewer, the illuminated half of her visage mirrored and joined by the shaded half—like sun and moon—in the characteristic implication of Picasso’s own presence. The brilliant blue background against which Marie-Thérèse is posed is exceptional for seated portraits from the period. While the bold primary color is seen in a few of the reclining nudes, Femme à la montre is the only depiction to offer the numinous backdrop to such a powerful extent, lending the seated Marie-Thérèse a reverential, almost hallowed aura like a mandorla surrounding a Madonna.
Center: Pablo Picasso, Le Miroir, 1932. Private Collection. Image © Succession Picasso/DACS, London 2023 / Bridgeman Images. Art © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Right: Pablo Picasso, Nu au fauteuil noir, 1932. Private Collection. Image © Succession Picasso/ Bridgeman Images. Art © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The present work is further distinguished by the crisply articulated lines and geometric forms of the armchair and pattered dress, each element carefully offset by contrasting colors and shapes. Marie-Thérèse’s green checked blouse can be read a direct reference to the patterned tapestries and garments found within Matisse's canvases from the period, like his 1927 Femme à l’eveil, which was included in The Museum of Modern Art's 1931 retrospective on Matisse. Accordingly, Femme à la montre acts not only as an ode to Picasso’s Madonna, but also as a direct riposte to his greatest artistic rival.
The upright posture of Picasso's sitter and sheer scale of Femme à la montre lend his muse an enhanced impression of maturity and agency in contrast to the more naïve and objectified scenes of slumber and reverie. Absent the attributes that often accompany her in other compositions, such as a book or a mandolin, Marie-Thérèse’s figure and stylized attire are the main focus in the present work. The primacy of the sitter’s wristwatch is of particular importance, the timepiece alluding to the drawn-out period of secrecy while the lovers awaited an official end to the artist's marriage.
A nod to the contemporary times—a wristwatch was previously considered a masculine accessory—as well as a reference to an item gifted by Picasso to the sitter, the watch reiterates an inherent link to the artist within the portrait. One of the earliest appearances of the accessory in his paintings is found in a portrait of his wife from 1917, Portrait d`Olga. More than a decade later, the motif resurfaced in Femme à la montre, yet its wearer has been supplanted by a new lover. In the present work, Marie-Thérèse metaphorically borrows the timepiece from Olga, just as she has borrowed Picasso’s affections. The prominence of the watch at the center of Marie-Thérèse’s lap further suggests the latent erotic connection of the object.
According to John Richardson, “Picasso must have given Olga a wristwatch, just as, years later, he would give one to Marie-Thérèse Walter. Lydia Gasman believes that wristwatches held a special significance for Picasso. Marie-Thérèse developed a superstitious reverence for her watch… According to Gasman the ominousness of wristwatches in Picasso’s imagery has to do with ‘time corroding love’” (John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, The Triumphant Years 1917-1932, New York, 2010, p. 107). Viewed in this context, the watch acts as a vanitas device much like those found in the works of Old Masters like Rembrandt and Velázquez whom Picasso so revered. Picasso would return to the motif of the watch in 1936—the year when he finally broke with his wife and began to fall out of love with Marie-Thérèse—in a withering portrait alternately believed to depict each woman. In the 1936 picture, a hunched figure looks somberly into a mirror, her bridal crown slipping off her head as a shadowy presence of another woman looms behind her.
The decorative armchair also plays a crucial role in the composition of Femme à la montre. The rectangular pentimenti in the top portion of the background suggests that Picasso may have originally envisioned a larger armchair for his muse before subsequently reducing the chairback to half-height. By contrasting more of his sitter directly against the brilliant blue backdrop, Picasso lends an even greater aura to his lover as her presence fills and dominates the composition.
It is almost impossible to escape the presence of the seated female figure in Picasso’s oeuvre, from his depictions of his earliest lovers like Fernande Olivier to his final muse and second wife, Jacqueline Roque, as each woman took her rightful, if temporary, place on the throne. The most iconic seated portraits of Picasso’s oeuvre date from the 1930s when Olga, Marie-Thérèse and later Dora Maar vied for primacy of place in the artist’s life. As Steven A. Nash observed, “The most common motif is a half-length figure seated in a chair, reminiscent in format of so many portraits of seated popes and cardinals from past centuries… [The seated figure] was a reliable template of psychological investigation… Indeed, the range of emotion portrayed in these expressive women runs from humor and joy to utter abjection” (Exh. Cat., Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Picasso and the War Years 1937-1945, 1998-99, p. 33).
Right: Pablo Picasso, Portrait d’Olga dans un fauteuil, 1918. Musée National Picasso, Paris. Image © Succession Picasso/ Bridgeman Images. Art © 2023 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Though each portrait varies in style, depicting different women in precise moments in Picasso’s life, these seated, attentive figures acted as an ideal audience for the artist and served as a vehicle for expressing the alternately palpable and dwindling sexual tension between the painter and his model. From the fragmented Fernandes of his Cubist years, to the harpy-like depictions of Olga and the surreal, sensual curves of Marie-Thérèse, Picasso’s seated women each have a monumental, edifying presence and are invariably depicted with a powerful sense of psychological drama.
Dearly kept in the artist’s personal collection for decades, Femme à la montre was signed by Picasso decades after its execution, likely at the time of the 1966 sale to Ernst Beyeler. By this period, Marie-Thérèse was a long a figure of the artist’s past. In 1961, Picasso and his second wife Jacqueline Roque had settled in a villa in the hilltop town of Mougins where they would spend the rest of their lives. Even in one of the greatest portraits of his young lover, Picasso’s subsequent muses are felt—the artist’s signature in Femme à la montre notably appears to be executed in Jacqueline’s red nail varnish. As the artist's granddaughter Diana Widmaier Picasso wrote of such works, “You can hardly avoid associating the dominant red of Picasso's signature with the red nail polish of Jacqueline, the companion of his final years” (Diana Widmaier Picasso, Picasso, 'Art Can Only Be Erotic', New York, 2005, pp. 29-30).
This exquisite composition of Femme à la montre is matched by an illustrious provenance dating back to Ernst Beyeler, the Swiss dealer and collector whose impeccable collection of modern works would later become the basis of the Beyeler Foundation. Beyeler became captivated by Picasso’s works in the 1950s and soon befriended the artist, often quoting Picasso’s maxim that art’s purpose is “to wash the dust of everyday life from the soul.”
A letter from Beyeler to Emily Fisher Landau in 2006 describes how the dealer hand-selected the present work from Picasso’s studio in Mougins: “This important work…belongs to a legendary group of paintings that I was allowed to purchase directly from Picasso's stock back in 1966. I was allowed into his studio in Mougins in order to choose directly from his treasured paintings. This was not only an unparalleled gesture of friendship but altogether a very rare privilege. Feeling of how nervous I was, he charmingly told me to go ahead in choosing, he however would put things back he did not want to sell. So I started selecting from two vaults that were filled with his paintings…Femme à la montre is among the finest, and most unique renderings of Picasso’s companion, muse and lover Marie-Thérèse Walter” (Ernst Beyeler in a letter to Emily Fisher Landau, 20 November 2006).
Picasso and Marie-Thérèse: The Monumental Seated Portraits of 1932 in Prestigious Museum Collections
Femme à la montre remained in the collection of Emily Fisher Landau since she acquired the work in 1968. For the last fifty-five years, the work held pride of place above the mantle in her apartment. Never before offered at auction, Femme à la montre is a tour de force of Picasso’s famed 1932 artistic production and one of the finest examples of his portraiture ever created.