Pablo Picasso

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Cesare Tosi, Milan
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the early 1980s

Menton, Palais de l'Europe, Dixième Biennale Internationale d'Art de Menton, 1974, no. 10, illustrated in colour in the catalogue (titled Homme à la pipe)
Verona, Galleria dello Scudo, Pablo Picasso, 1904-1972, 1983, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso. Œuvres de 1967 et 1968, Paris, 1973, vol. XXVII, no. 309, illustrated pl. 120
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. The Sixties III, 1968-1969, San Francisco, 2003, no. 68-153, illustrated p. 46

The canvas is unlined and there is no evidence of retouching under ultra-violet light. Apart from some very slight stable craquelure, this work is in very good original condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate, although slightly fresher in the original.
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The monumental Mousquetaire. Buste of 1968 belongs to a major series of paintings that Picasso executed on the theme of the musketeer, which became one of the key subjects of his late œuvre. In October and November of that year Picasso painted a number of musketeers, almost all of them depicted with a pipe (fig. 1). The image of the musketeer allowed Picasso to escape the limitations of contemporary subject matter and explore the spirit of a past age. These characters embodied the courtly mannerisms of the Renaissance gentleman and signified the golden age of painting, reflecting the influence of Rembrandt on Picasso's art. Picasso had devoted a large portion of his time and passion throughout the 1960s to the reinterpretation and investigation of the old masters, an experience in which he reaffirmed his connection to some of the greatest painters in the history of art. The musketeer series was a continuation of this interest and began, according to his wife Jacqueline Roque, 'when Picasso started to study Rembrandt' (fig. 2) but his appreciation of other great figures of the Renaissance, including Shakespeare, also influenced the appearance of these characters.

 

The musketeers are understood to be disguised portraits of Picasso himself, and their iconography is indicative of his self-awareness in his mature years. Towards the end of his life, the image of the musketeer evoked Picasso's Spanish heritage and his nostalgia for the youthful vigour of his early years. As Marie-Laure Bernadac has observed: 'If woman was depicted in all her aspects in Picasso's art, man always appeared in disguise or in a specific role, the painter at work or the musketeer. In 1966, a new and final character emerged in Picasso's iconography and dominated his last period to the point of becoming its emblem. This was the Golden Age gentleman, a half-Spanish, half-Dutch musketeer dressed in richly adorned clothing complete with ruffs, a cape, boots, and a big plumed hat [...] All of these musketeers are men in disguise, romantic gentlemen, virile and arrogant soldiers, vainglorious and ridiculous despite their haughtiness. Dressed, armed, and helmeted, this man is always seen in action; sometimes the musketeer even takes up a brush and becomes the painter' (M.-L. Bernadac in The Ultimate Picasso, New York, 2000, p. 455).

 

As the character of the musketeer developed in Picasso's paintings in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he became a multi-dimensional figure, exhibiting a range of personalities including card players, musicians, and pipe smokers, as in the present work. The influence of salon painters such as Velazquez and Delacroix are evident in Picasso's works from this period, yet with his fluid technique, Picasso made no attempt here to create a spatial portrait. Rather, his layers of bright pigment give the musketeer's face a mask-like quality, and his hair and costume are painted in quick, assured brushstrokes. The energy which results from this free, spontaneous style as well as from the monumentality of the work reflects the passion Picasso maintained into his later years.

 

 

 

Fig. 1, Pablo Picasso, Nu debout et mousquetaire assis, 1968, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Fig. 2, Rembrandt van Rijn, The Nightwatch (detail), 1642, oil on canvas, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Fig. 3 (opposite), Picasso in Cannes, 1960. Photograph by André Villers