Pablo Picasso

Gaby Depeyre Lespinasse, Paris (acquired as a gift from the artist circa 1915-16 and until the 1970s)

Sale: Drouot Rive Gauche, Paris, March 8, 1976, lot 114

Private Collection, Montreal

Stephan Hahn, New York (1995)

Charitable Foundation (sold: Sotheby's, New York, May 13, 1997, lot 38)

Acquired at the above sale

Avignon, Picasso au Palais des Papes 25 ans après, 1995, illustrated in color in the catalogue

Pierre Daix, Picasso Créature, Paris, 1987, discussed, p. 442

Pierre Daix, Picasso Life and Art, New York, 1993, discussed p. 438

Marie-France Saurat, "Picasso Toujours," Paris Match, June 8, 1995, illustrated p. 84

Excellent condition. Oil on artist's board. The paint layer is fresh and intact. Under UV light, no evidence of inpainting.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Pivoine is a rare, early still-life that Picasso completed a few months after he first moved to Paris.  Painted while he was still in his early twenties, the picture highlights the influences that were at play on Picasso's art during this very impressionable period of his life.  Around this time, the painter Odilon Redon was exhibiting his work at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris, and Redon's floral still-lifes were wildly popular among the public.  Picasso certainly saw these pictures, as well as those of the post-Impressionist van Gogh, on his rounds to the Parisian galleries, and their aesthetic had a strong impact on his painting.   Nevertheless, Picasso took from these works the influences that he needed in order to create a style that was truly his own.  The present work, completed in 1901, is a resonant example of this artistic distillation.

Pivoine was unrecorded for much of its history, but its existence came to light in 1976 on the occasion of its sale in Paris.  The picture was owned for over half a century by Gaby Depeyre Lespinasse, a young woman with whom Picasso had a clandestine affair in 1915-16 while his fiancée Eva was dying of tuberculosis.   Picasso give this work, along with several other paintings and drawings, to Lespinasse, who kept it until her death.  In the notes to his 1993 biography of the artist, Pierre Daix noted the relationship between the present work and three floral still lifes by the artist that were exhibited at Ambroise Vollard's gallery in 1901.  Number 28 in that exhibition was a painting of peonies that now belongs to the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona and is very closely related to the present picture.

These 1901 still lifes mark the debut of Picasso's artistic consideration of flowers in his paintings.  Unlike more traditional depictions of the subject, Picasso's floral still-lifes burst from their vases, as if the arrangement cannot be contained.  John Richardson once recalled Picasso's treatment of the flowers that he would receive as gifts: "Bouquets from admirers would be put in a vase without water.  'They don't need it,' [Picasso] used to say.   'They're going to die anyway!'  And he would leave them around as a vanitas" (quoted in Jean Sutherland Boggs, Picasso and Things (exhibition catalogue), 1992, p. 40).   This appreciation of flowers in all stages of their bloom is telling of Picasso's 'organic' expectations with regard to this subject in his painting.  In this work, for example, he shows the part of the bunch wilting in the vase, as seen with the flowers at the bottom, while simultaneously some of the blossoms at the top of the bouquet remain full of life.

Picasso's compositions from this period are atmospheric in appearance, incorporating the aesthetic of Symbolism and the mystical air that Picasso would later bring out in full force in his legendary, Garçon à la pipe, 1905.  As in that picture, floral motifs were extremely effective in enhancing this ethereal quality that Picasso desired for these paintings of the early 1900s.  Throughout his career, Picasso continued to use flowers as a mechanism for enlivening or brightening his pictures.  The subject of the single floral still-life, however, is largely absent from Picasso's oeuvre, save for a select number of compositions that he completed during World War II.  These early still-lifes are indeed a rarity in both their subject and their style.  Most of all, they are a stunning reminder of the myriad incarnations that Picasso's art would undergo over the next seventy years.