Pablo Picasso

Galerie Kahnweiler, Paris (acquired from the artist and sold: Hôtel Drouot, Paris, May 7-8, 1923, lot 350)

André Lefevre, Paris (acquired at the above sale and sold: Galliera, Paris, November 25, 1965, lot 73)

Perls Galleries, New York

Acquired from the above

Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne, La Collection André Lefevre, 1964, no. 221

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvre de 1906 à 1912, Paris, 1942, vol. 2*, no. 251, illustrated

Jose Camon Aznar, Picasso y el Cubismo, Madrid 1956, illustrated pl. 296

Pierre Daix and Joan Rosselet, Picasso, The Cubist Years, 1907-1916, London, 1979, no. 397, illustrated

Malcolm Gee, Dealers, Critics, and Collectors of Modern Painting, New York and London, 1981, catalogued p. 39

Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso Cubism, 1907-1917, New York, 1990, no. 567, illustrated p. 205 (as dating from 1910-11)

Only a year separates the celebrated painting Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier) (see fig.1) in the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the present work painted in the spring of 1911. Although the subject in the two works is identical, the handling is quite distinct, leaving the form of the musician and her instrument essentially intact in the former while dissolving it in the latter. After approaching abstraction in the paintings executed at Cadaques in the summer of 1910, Picasso began to introduce what John Golding has referred to as "visual clues, small fragments of legibility, into his work to render it more accessible to the spectator" (John Golding, Cubism: A History and Analysis 1907-1914, New York, 1959).

Although the head and lower extremities of the musician are rendered in an abstract manner, the central section of the canvas with the swelling form of the mandolin is quite clearly defined. Further clarification is provided by the beautifully modulated stippling which Picasso uses to create his amalgam of forms and space, more concentrated toward the middle of the canvas than toward the edges. This ranges in tone from a silvery gray to golden ochre, the latter reaching its greatest intensity in the instrument itself.

Comparables:

Fig. 1, Pablo Picasso, Fille au mandoline, 1910, The Museum of Modern Art, New York