巴布羅·畢加索

Galerie Louis Carré, Paris (acquired from the artist)

Paul Rosenberg, New York (acquired from the above)

Alexandre Rosenberg & Co., Inc., New York (acquired from the above)

Mr. and Mrs. John Hay Whitney (acquired from the above on April 19, 1948 and sold: Sotheby’s, New York, May 5, 2004, lot 27)

Acquired at the above sale

Paris, Galerie Louis Carré, Picasso Libre, 21 Peintures: 1940-1945, 1945, no. 17, illustrated in the catalogue

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Selections from five New York Private Collections, 1951

New York, Paul Rosenberg Galleries, Picasso, 1955, no. 15

New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery, Pictures Collected by Yale Alumni, 1956, no. 144

New York, Paul Rosenberg Galleries, Masterpieces Recalled, 1957, no. 43

Milwaukee Art Institute, An Inaugural Exhibition:  El Greco, Rembrandt, Goya, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Picasso, 1957, no. 106

London, The Tate Gallery, The John Hay Whitney Collection, 1960-61, no. 44

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1976 (on loan)

New York, The Museum of Modern Art, Pablo Picasso, A Retrospective, 1980, illustrated in the catalogue, illustrated in the catalogue

Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, The John Hay Whitney Collection, 1983, no. 64, illustrated in the catalogue

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1944 à 1946, vol. 14, Paris, 1963, no. 22, illustrated pl. 12

Jean Sutherland Boggs, Picasso and Things (exhibition catalogue), The Cleveland Museum of Art; The Philadephia Museum of Art; Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 1992, fig. 117b, illustrated p. 286

Picasso and the War Years (exhibition catalogue), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1999-2000, photograph of an installation view of the Picasso exhibition held at the Galerie Louis Carrié in 1945 featuring the present work

The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Nazi Occupation, 1940-1944, San Francisco, 1999, no. 44-148, illustrated p. 375 (as dating incorrectly from 8.12.44)

Excellent condition. Original canvas. The paint layer is clean and stable. There are some very fine vertical lines of retouching that address the heavy canvas weave’s visual impact. These retouches were well executed with a light, adept and precise hand.
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.

Symbolic of victory in Europe, Picasso's paintings of a tomato plant in bloom are considered some of the most important works that he produced during the war years. Although his work of this period tended to avoid direct references to the war, these pictures are imbued with both personal and cultural significance.

In the summer of 1944, when the Allied forces began to advance towards Paris and the end of Nazi Occupation was in sight, Picasso could not help but to be embroiled in current events. For the first time since completing his epic Guernica in 1937, he made direct references in his pictures to life in Europe during the war.  While staying with Marie-Thérèse and their daughter Maya at the Boulevard Henri IV in the weeks before the Liberation of Paris, Picasso took notice of the potted tomato plant that was growing besides the window of the apartment. Potted fruit-bearing plants such as these were not uncommon in civilian households throughout Europe during this period, when food rations limited the amount of available produce for consumption. Seeing the resilient plant as a sign of hope as it continued to blossom and bear fruit, Picasso began a series of four drawings of the theme that July, and eventually developed his ideas onto canvas for an oil series.

Between August 3 and August 12, 1944, Picasso painted nine canvases of a potted tomato plant, with its vines tethered to a supporting stake and positioned in front of a window.  Varying in degrees of abstraction, this series incorporated vestiges of the artist's early Cubist style, as well as the bold modeling and shadowing that characterized many of his wartime still-lifes.   The present work was painted on August 7, about mid-way through Picasso's production of this series.  According to Zervos, Picasso's interest in this subject began on July 27, when he executed four preliminary drawings for these paintings, including one that specifically relates to the present work.

Reiterating an argument originally made by Maurice Jardot in 1955, Jean Sutherland Boggs has discussed how Picasso chose the tomato plant as a symbol of the "victory gardens" that were popular during the war, when food rations compelled civilians to grow their own produce on the window sills and balconies of their homes.  Sutherland writes, "Picasso was recording this consequence of war, not as a deprivation, but as a source of admiration.  His tomatoes are heavy and full, most of them handsome green promising the blush of pink, and then the brilliant vermilion of the ripe fruit.  Picasso could not have helped admiring their readiness to grow toward the freely painted sunlight and sky, which he expressed in the movement of the vines and the shape of the leaves as well as in the fruits themselves.  The tomato plants are an earthy and decorative metaphor for the human need to survive and flourish even within the constraints of war" (J. S. Boggs, Picasso and Things (exhibition catalogue), The Cleveland Museum of Art; The Philadephia Museum of Art; Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, 1992, p. 286).

The genre of still-lifes was a significant component of Picasso's wartime production, as were portraits of his mistresses Dora Maar and Françoise Gilot.  These were all subjects that did not remind him of the trouble that had fallen upon Paris during the Occupation, and his concentration on these themes resulted in the most fruitful and imaginative production of still-lifes since his days as a Cubist at the beginning of the century.  To his public during this period, Picasso's wartime still-lifes held even greater meaning: they were an outward sign of the artist's perseverance during the war as a resident painter in Paris.  In the days leading up to the Liberation and in the midst of his painting of the tomato plant series, Picasso met with several British and American journalists and soldiers at his studio at 7, rue de Grands-Augustins who wished to praise him for this accomplishment.  After his visit to Picasso's studio, John Pudney, the British Royal Air Force squadron leader and poet wrote that he had seen canvases of  "the pot of growing tomatoes which stood in the window," and reported Picasso to have remarked,  "a more disciplined art, less unconstrained freedom in a time like this is the artist's defense and guard...Most certainly it is not a time for the creative man to fail, to shrink, to stop working...." (quoted in the The John Hay Whitney Collection (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C, 1983, p. 153).

Although Picasso was not an active member of the Resistance movement like his biographer Christian Zervos, his artistic activity during the war was deemed as heroic by many of his contemporaries around the world, including Alfred Barr, the director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.  Perhaps the best example of the public's favorable attitude toward the artist was expressed in an article from the New York Times in October 1945: "Today Picasso stands out as the standard-bearer of the artistic movement.  In the first place, his attitude during the occupation has won general admiration.  He steadfastly refused to fall for propaganda wiles as did too many French painters and sculptors.  He neither exhibited his works in Paris under German auspices nor accepted junketing tours through the Reich under the plea that 'art has no country.' And when the German authorities offered him coal which to heat his studio he replied that he preferred to freeze -- like most Parisians.  For these reasons -- and others -- Picasso occupies the place of honor in the Autumn Salon" (reprinted in M. FitzGerald, "Reports from the Home Fronts: Some Skirmishes over Picasso's Reputation," Picasso and the War Years (exhibition catalogue), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, pp. 118-19).

 

In June of 1945, the Galerie Louis Carré staged one of the first exhibitions of Picasso's wartime production, organized in collaboration with the Comité France-Espagne to benefit Spanish relief efforts.  The present work was included among the 21 paintings featured in this show and was thereafter acquired by Picasso's longtime dealer, Paul Rosenberg.  Rosenberg's son, Alexandre, later sold it to Jock Whitney in 1948.  Since then, it has been exhibited in some of the most important exhibitions of the artist's work, including the major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1980.