Pablo Picasso

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (acquired from the artist)
Brook Street Gallery, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner in July 1971

London, Brook Street Gallery, Picasso: Summer Exhibition. Paintings, Drawings and Prints 1900-1970, 1971, no. 17, illustrated in the catalogue

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso. Œuvres de 1965 à 1967, Paris, 1972, vol. XXV, no. 61, illustrated pl. 36
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. The Sixties II, 1964-1967, San Francisco, 2002, no. 65-087, illustrated p. 177

The canvas is unlined and there is no evidence of retouching under ultra-violet light. This work is in very good original condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate, although slightly fresher in the original.
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The early to mid-1960s marked a period of great synthesis for Picasso, reflected in the theme of the artist and his model, which preoccupied him during this time. It proved to be one of his most passionate and energetic projects, inspired by the final love of Picasso's life, Jacqueline, whom he married in 1961. The artist first explored this subject intensively in the spring of 1963, dividing the pictorial space equally between the painter and his model (fig. 2). As Picasso continued to return to this subject, the painter depicted in his compositions gradually occupied less of the canvas until, in the series he undertook in March 1963 to which the present work belongs, his presence is usually merely suggested. Although the model's appearance does not reveal a direct likeness to Picasso's wife, who never posed for him, she bears the features that the artist always used to portray Jacqueline.

 

The relationship and synergy between the artist and model was one of profound complexity, 'the more Picasso painted this theme, the more he pushed the artist-model relationship towards its ultimate conclusion: the artist embraces his model, cancelling out the barrier of the canvas and transforming the artist-model relationship into a man-woman relationship. Painting is an act of love, according to Gert Schiff, and John Richardson speaks of 'sex as metaphor for art, and art as a metaphor for sex' (Marie-Laure Bernadac, 'Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model', in Late Picasso (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 77).

 

With her voluptuous curves and long jet-black hair, the model represents the object of the artist's desire, the picture's erotic undertone emphasised by the gap between art and reality, between the eighty-four year old painter and his young muse. Picasso's waning sexual potency is countered by his power of vision and creativity, by the swift, confident application of paint, and the remarkably bold free-flowing treatment of colour. The love that Picasso felt for his wife is reflected in the passionate vitality and excitement radiating from the present work. Her cross-legged and centred pose convey a universality and eternal presence, identifying Jacqueline as the ultimate feminine representation. The painting seen on the easel closely resembles Femme nue assise dans un fauteuil (fig. 3), painted by Picasso a few months earlier.

 

In his discussion of Picasso's late works, David Sylvester links them to his early masterpiece, Demoiselles d'Avignon of 1907: 'The resemblance of figures in the Demoiselles and in late Picasso to masked tribal dancers is as crucial as their scale in giving them a threatening force. It is irrelevant whether or not particular faces or bodies are based on particular tribal models: what matters is the air these personages have of coming from a world more primitive, possibly more cannibalistic and certainly more elemental than ours. Despite the rich assortment of allusions to paintings in the Renaissance tradition, the treatment of space rejects that tradition in favour of an earlier one, the flat unperspectival space of, say, medieval Catalan frescoes... At twenty five, Picasso's raw vitality was already being enriched by the beginnings of an encyclopaedic awareness of art; at ninety, his encyclopaedic awareness of art was still being enlivened by a raw vitality' (D. Sylvester in ibid., p. 144). Indeed, this 'encyclopaedic awareness of art' is reflected in the complexity of the present work, coupled with the passion and virtuosity Picasso maintained into his later years.

Fig. 1, Picasso and Jacqueline, Cannes, Easter 1961. Photograph by Edward Quinn

Fig. 2, Pablo Picasso, Le Peintre et son modèle, 1963, oil on canvas. Sold: Sotheby's, London, 19^th June 2006.

Fig. 3, Pablo Picasso, Femme nue assise dans un fauteuil, 1965, oil on canvas. Sold: Sotheby's, New York, 4^th November 2004.

Fig. 4, Picasso and Jacqueline in Picasso's studio, 1960s. Photograph by Edward Quinn