Pablo Picasso

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
R. S. Johnson International Gallery, Chicago
Private Collection

Paris, Galerie Louise Leiris, 172 Dessins en Noir et en Couleurs, 1972, no. 71bis
Chicago, R. S. Johnson International Gallery,  Hommage to Picasso (1881 - 1973), 1973, no. 50, illustrated on the cover of catalogue

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso,  supplément aux volumes I à V, Paris, vol. XXXIII, 1954, no. 402, illustrated pl. 145
The Picasso Project, Picassos Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: The Final Years, 1970-73, San Francisco, 2004, no. 72-138, illustrated p. 313

Executed on cream wove paper, sheet was split carefully and paper is stable. Affixed to a window mat on the verso at the top corners and along the top edge. Bottom edge is deckled. The sheet is time-darkened. There is a small crease in the sheet at the top edge to the left of the figure's hat. Verso shows foxing. Work is in good condition.
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Executed in 1972, Buste d'homme au chapeau features two musketeers, a key subject in Picasso late oeuvre. A grinning man wearing a large hat fills the sheet, while a miniature portrait of his companion peeks out from below.  The theme of the musketeer, which first appeared in the work of Picasso's formative years, represents a sort of disguised self portrait, and the return of this iconography is indicative of his self-awareness in his mature years.  Toward the end of his life, the image of the musketeer evoked Picasso's Spanish heritage and his nostalgia for his lost youthful vigor.  As Marie-Laure Bernadec has observed: "If woman was depicted in all her aspects of 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 a richly adorned clothing complete with cuffs, 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).