Pablo Picasso

Galerie Beyeler, Basel (acquired from the artist)
Acquired from the above in 1966

Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Picasso, 1966-67, no. 45
London, Tate Gallery, Picasso: Sculptor/Painter, 1994, no. 97

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1932 à 1938, vol. 8, Paris, 1957, no. 64, illustrated pl. 28
Pierre Daix, Dictionnaire Picasso, Paris, 1995, discussed p. 818
The Picasso Project, Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, Surrealism 1930-1936, San Francisco, 1997, no. 32-163, illustrated p. 147
Yves-Alain Bois, Matisse and Picasso, Paris, 1999, illustrated pl. 74

For Picasso, time spent on the beach was never time wasted. Throughout his life the beach was a source of inspiration, an environment equally conducive to erotic exploration or evocations of the ancient world. At Juan-les-Pins in 1920 the beach was used as a backdrop for the activities of three humorously distorted nudes (see fig. 1), while at Dinard in 1922 two monumental nude goddesses ran recklessly along the beach.

The summers of 1927 and 1928, spent respectively at Cannes and Dinard, were particularly productive as the clandestine presence of the young Marie-Thérèse Walter in Picasso’s life added an erotic frisson to seaside activities.  John Richardson has described how, at Dinard in July 1928,  “Whenever possible, Picasso would escape from his wife’s sulks and the stifling atmosphere of their ugly rented house (the Villa des Roches in the Saint-Enogat quarter of Dinard) and make for the Plage de l’Ecluse in another part of the town. Marie-Thérèse would be playing ball with some of the children from her holiday home – a scene Picasso would repeatedly portray on the spot over the next few weeks, and from memory laced with fantasy over the next few years” (John Richardson, “Picasso and Marie-Therese Walter,” Through the Eye of Picasso 1928-1934 (exhibition catalogue), William Beadleston Gallery, New York, 1985).

Sketchbook 1044, used by Picasso between July 27 and November 17, 1928 is virtually a diary of this period when Picasso’s emotional life veered between despair at the state of his marriage and exhilaration at the freedom experienced with Marie-Thérèse.  John Richardson has commented: “No question about it, the sketchbook casts a shadow ahead of it out of all proportion to its format. Apart from the wire constructions, the so - called 'Bone' paintings of 1929 emanate from it. And four years later Picasso was still executing variations on the ball-playing bathers who originated in its pages” (ibid.) (see fig. 2).

Le Sauvetage is the largest and most highly developed treatment of a theme that preoccupied Picasso in the latter half of 1932. During the summer of that year Picasso was at Boisgeloup while Marie-Thérèse was vacationing on the seaside, probably at Dieppe or Etretat. Beginning in September with Femmes sur la plage (Zervos vol. 8, no. 152) and Baigneuses (Zervos, vol. 8, no. 61, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart) a series of works emerged from memories of the summer spent at Dinard in 1928.

In addition to three India ink drawings executed between November 22 and November 25 (Zervos, vol. 8, nos. 57-59) and to a series of etchings, there are two closely related oil paintings. In Baigneuses au ballon, painted on November 28, 1932 (Zervos, vol. 8, no. 62; see fig. 3), the figures of the two women playing ball and the third reclining on the beach are defined by irregular areas of flat color.  In Femmes et enfants au bord de la mer (Zervos, vol. 8, no. 63; see fig. 4), tragedy interrupts the carefree world of Baigneuses au ballon. The dramatic image of a drowned woman being rescued in the center of the canvas, inspired, perhaps, by an event in which Marie Thérèse participated or reported to Picasso, is flanked by a diving figure in the upper left corner and by a woman and two children flying a kite on the right. 

Picasso may have felt that this composition was too congested since when he returned to the subject on a larger canvas in the present work, he moved the rescue group to the right, the ball players to the left and eliminated the children altogether.  The head of the swimmer was also greatly reduced in scale. In essence he clarified the motif by separating the two groups, contrasting the graceful arabesques of the ballplayers with the unexpected tragedy of the rescue group on the right. Almost meeting in the centre of the canvas the head of the swimmer emerging for air and the drowned woman bent back and gasping for air dramatize the insecurity of life. That the features of the figures in the rescue group are based on those of Marie-Thérèse adds a particularly poignant note to the composition. It is also noteworthy that the open mouth and streaming hair of the figure of the rescuer prefigure Guernica.

Although the dramatic subject of this remarkable painting derived from Picasso’s most personal experiences and fears, it was also part of a discourse with his greatest rival Henri Matisse. The series of canvases to which the present work belongs was painted just a month after the publication of Matisse’s illustrations for the Poésies of Mallarmé. As Yves-Alain Bois has observed: “At the time, there was much talk in Paris of the work in progress on The Dance, all the more so since Matisse was keeping it secret from absolutely everyone, save his assistant. Games and Rescue on the Beach is Picasso’s anticipative response to The Dance, given the Mallarmé book – his anticipative outbidding. His prescience in this painting is uncanny: the flat tones, the contrapposto of the figures, the syncopated rhythm, the drama (half-violence, half-pleasure) – all the elements of this turbulent picture are 'echoes' of Matisse’s Dance'" (Yves-Alain Bois, Matisse and Picasso (exhibition catalogue), Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 1998, p. 90)

Fig. 1,  Pablo Picasso, Trois baigneuses, 1920, oil on wood, Private Collection

Fig. 2,     Pablo Picasso, Page from the Dinard Sketchbook, August 18, 1928

Fig. 3,     Pablo Picasso, Baigneuses, September 6, 1932, oil on canvas, Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Fig. 4,     Pablo Picasso, Femmes et enfants au bord de la mer, November 1932, oil on canvas, Private Collection