PABLO PICASSO | Le peintre et son modèle

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris Private Collection, Italy

Private Collection, Europe (acquired from the above. Sold: Christie’s, New York, 4th May 2010, lot 43)

Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Tel Aviv, The Tel Aviv Museum of Art & Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Picasso, 1966, no. 65, illustrated in the catalogue Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Pablo Picasso, 1968, no. 123 (as dating from 1963)

Milan, Galleria Arte Borgogna & Brescia, Galleria Moretto, Pablo Picasso, 1970, no. 10, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Castello di Lerici, Il genio differente nell'arte contemporanea, da Picasso a oggi, 1989, no. 3, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Cherasco, Palazzo Salmatoris, Picasso, i mille volti di un genio, 1996, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Arezzo, L'Immagine Galleria d'Arte Contemporanea, Del Figurare, 1997, no. 10, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Rome, Museo del Risorgimento Vittoriano, Novecento nudo, 1997-98, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, œuvres de 1964, Paris, 1971, vol. 24, no. 259, illustrated pl. 97 (as dating from 4th November 1964) Dino Cimagalli, 'Così i pittori hanno messo a nudo il Novecento’, in Gente, 17th February 1998, illustrated in colour p. 73

Painted in 1964, Le Peintre et son modèle is a powerful example of Picasso’s highly expressive late work on a magnificent scale. Throughout his career Picasso chose to paint subjects that represented his life as an artist, and the theme that came to symbolise his own life and work most evocatively was that of the painter and his model. The male figure, a recognisable amalgamation of self-portrait, paints a female nude reminiscent of the women seen in canvases by Rubens and Ingres. With its foundation in this trajectory of art history, Le Peintre et son modèle is a monumental and dynamic depiction of this historic theme. During the autumn and winter of 1964, Picasso executed an extensive series of paintings on the theme of the painter and his model. Le Peintre et son modèle was completed on 9th November, and is among the most monumental of the series of over forty painter and model pictures executed during this period. ‘Picasso painted, drew and etched this subject so many times in his life that, as Michel Leiris has remarked, it almost became a genre in itself like landscape or still-life. In 1963 and 1964 he painted almost nothing else, the painter armed with his attributes, palette and brushes, the canvas on an easel, mostly seen from the side. Like a screen and the nude model seated or reclining in a space which presents all the characteristics of an artist’s studio, the big window, the sculpture on a stool, the folding screen the lamp, the divan, etc. All these stage props have nothing to do with Picasso’s real situation; he always painted without a palette and without an easel, directly onto a canvas laid flat. This is therefore not so much a record of his own work as an "epitome" of a profession’ (Marie-Laure Bernadac, Late Picasso (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 74).

Throughout this series of large canvases, the figure of the painter almost exclusively occupies the left-hand side of the composition, while the nude female model occupies the right half. Never tiring of exploring visual means of depicting erotic tension, in the years to follow Picasso developed a number of variations on this theme, always characterised by a great spontaneity in brushwork and coloration, and an extraordinary creative energy. While in the later variations of this theme men and women are seen in assorted costumes and performing various activities, such as musicians or musketeers, in the 1963-64 series the protagonists are unmistakably the artist himself and the model he is painting. However, rather than dedicated solely to the process of painting and modeling, the two figures are involved in the game of seduction, with the artist’s brushes and palette wittily suggestive of the man’s desire for his female subject and of the erotic tension between them. 

Picasso had devoted a large portion of his production throughout the 1960s to the reinterpretation of the old masters, an experience in which he reaffirmed his connection to some of the greatest painters in the history of art. His series of musketeers, commenced several years after Le Peintre et son modèle began, according to his wife Jacqueline Roque, ‘when Picasso started to study Rembrandt’. Picasso’s interest in Rembrandt’s work, however, was longstanding and its influence crucial to the development of the theme of the painter and his model in the late work. In 1963 he executed a large canvas entitled Rembrandt et Saskia (fig. 3), which Michael Fitzgerald states, was 'based on the Dutch master’s portrait of himself and his wife (c. 1635; Dresden). Picasso had admired Rembrandt’s art (particularly his prints) since at least the thirties. During his last decade he showed a particular appreciation for two, apparently contradictory, aspects of his predecessor’s work – the unflattering realism of Rembrandt’s late style, particularly self-portraits and depictions of the female nude, and the ornamental costumes of his early phase’ (M. Fitzgerald, Picasso, The Artist’s Studio (exhibition catalogue), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford & Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 2001-02, p. 57).

The motif of the female nude fascinated Picasso throughout his career, providing the inspiration for many of his greatest works. In various periods of his life, Picasso’s art was closely related to his personal relationships and the women depicted in his paintings were always influenced by Picasso’s female companions at the time. In Le Peintre et son modèle, the female figure is inspired by Jacqueline, the last love of his life, whom Picasso married in 1961. Although she is not a direct likeness of Jacqueline, with her characteristic hairstyle and almond eyes she bears the key features with which Picasso usually portrayed his last muse. The essence of Jacqueline, who never formally posed as Picasso’s model, is always present in his portraits of this period, including the present work.