Pablo Picasso

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (acquired from the artist)

Galerie Cahiers d'Art (Christian Zervos), Paris (acquired from the above)

Acquired from the above by the present owner on July 23, 1969

Høvikodden (Norway), Sonja Henies og Niels Onstads Kunstsentret, Picasso visits Norway, 1992, no. 21

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1969, Paris, 1976, vol. 31, no. 85, illustrated p. 27

Patrick-Gilles Persin, Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, Paris, 1990, illustrated p. 235

Picasso looked to the work of the Old Masters throughout his career, translating classic paintings into a new visual language. The influence of Rembrandt is best represented by Picasso's famous depiction of the Dutch artist with his wife Saskia, dating from 1963 (Zervos, vol. 23, no. 171). Rembrandt's subject matter also informed Picasso's series of musketeer paintings, in which he reinterpreted artistic standards while investigating his own identity. As noted by Carsten-Peter Warncke, "Picasso rarely expressed the role of modern artist, under constant observation by the omnipresent mass media, with such illuminating force. The painter under public scrutiny (i.e. Picasso himself) is obliged constantly to play new roles. He is the knight and the sailor, the circus artiste and the nobleman, but above all he is the 'new Rembrandt'. In the work of his old age, Picasso took the 17th-century Dutch painter as the artist par excellence with whom it was possible to identify. 'Rembrandt and Saskia' heralded a lengthy series of paintings which to a greater or lesser extent constituted masked self-portraits of Picasso. He was returning to the outmoded idea of the productive, creative person as genius" (Carsten-Peter Warncke and Ingo F. Walther, ed., Picasso 1881-1973, vol. II, Cologne, 1994, p. 653).

Buste d'homme à la pipe is one of two musketeer paintings Picasso completed on February 27, 1969. Toward the end of his life, the image of the musketeer also evoked Picasso's Spanish heritage and his nostalgia for the youthful vigor of his early years. As Marie-Laure Bernadac has observed, "If woman was depicted in all her aspects in Picasso's art, man always appeared in disguise or in a specific role, the painter at work or the musketeer-matador holding the implements of his virility - the long pipe, the dagger, or the sword. 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 richly adorned clothing complete with ruffs, a cape, boots, and a big plumed hat... [A]ll 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" (Brigitte Léal, Christine Piot and Marie-Laure Bernadac, The Ultimate Picasso, New York, 2000, p. 455). The bold colors and assertive brushstrokes in the present work reflect the vitality Picasso sought to capture in his musketeer series. The abstracted features of the musketeer's face stress the modernity of his treatment of a classic subject, and endow him with a commanding presence. Crowned with a purple plume, the regal costume is rendered in highly saturated red and yellow which, set against an orange background, suggest the blood red of the bullfighting ring and the sun-drenched landscape of Spain.