Fernando Botero (B. 1933)

oil on canvas

Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris
Private Collection, Paris
Sale: Sotheby's, New York, Latin American Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Prints, November 18, 1991, lot 42, illustrated in color

Paris, Galerie Claude Bernard, Botero Peintures/Pastels/Fusains, August, 1969, illustrated

Herman Arciniegas, Fernando Botero, New York, 1977, no. 73, illustrated in color
Carter Ratcliff, Botero, New York, 1980, p. 120, no. 97, illustrated in color
Pierre Restany, Botero, New York, 1983, n.n., illustrated in color
Giorgio Soavi, Botero, Milan, 1988, p. 65, no. 37, illustrated in color

This painting is in beautiful condition. The canvas is unlined. The paint layer is unvarnished and appears to be clean. There appears to be no retouches to the surface. The picture should not be varnished or restored in any way and is ready to be hung as is. (This condition report has been provided courtesy of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.)
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.
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This painting combines humor, voluptuousness and compositional

equilibrium with the artist's highly intellectualized manipulation of

one of the key monuments of the history of early modern art. In the

Déjeuner sur l'Herbe and related works, Botero enters the pantheon

of major masters who have proven their sensitivity to the attainments

of their earlier counterparts by using their achievements as starting

points for their creative impulses.

—Edward J. Sullivan

 

 

Over a century after Édouard Manet scandalized the French academic establishment with his then shocking rendering of a female nude accompanied by two properly attired gentlemen enjoying a lovely afternoon picnic, the Colombian painter Fernando Botero set out to pay homage to this iconic work with his own unmistakable take on this classically inspired subject. It should be noted that Manet's painting itself was based on an engraving made after a composition executed by the Renaissance painter Raphael depicting a grouping of mythological deities. Interestingly Manet's contemporaries failed to identify this source, rejecting the painting in part for its seemingly random nudity. Indeed it was its lack of plausibility or rather its transgression of the accepted norms of representation that garnered its greatest criticism and banished it from the official Salon to the now famous Salon des Refusés. Yet today Manet's painting is widely considered one of the most radical paintings in the history of early modern art—for the very reasons that inflamed contemporary sensibilities in the 1860s it is today considered one of the most groundbreaking works of its time. Botero's own playful, yet thoughtful reinterpretation of Manet's infamous painting reveals similar concerns and attempts to push the boundaries further in a work that is ripe with myriad visual puns and double entendres that turn the classic late 19^th-century masterpiece on its head, while also expanding the possibilities of representation and gender politics vis à vis the canon of Western art history.

 

Fernando Botero's artistic oeuvre reveals a passion for art history through his multiple appropriations of well-known masterpieces that he ably transforms with his signature style. From 1966 through 1973 Botero returned to Manet's iconic painting on various occasions and created several versions of which this is the most important.¹ Here the figures are subjected to Botero's characteristic sense of voluptuousness and disproportion while set against a smoky, sfumato-like atmosphere that further suspends them between reality and pictorial illusionism.  It is not difficult to see why Botero was attracted to the work of Manet, an artist equally engaged with questioning the limits of representation. However Botero pushes the envelope further by breaking a few more rules of his own. In his version of Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe, the sexual tension between the protagonists is heightened while the notion of transgression, both moral and artistic, is explored further through such conventional tropes or visual puns as the red slithering snake that threatens to disturb our Edenic couple's romantic interlude, the sensuous, almost life-like fruit strewn about like loose balls on a pool table, and the satin ribbon bow tied on the picnic basket that strategically covers our modern day Adam's private parts. But perhaps the most notable and effective move away from traditional conventions is the shift from a female to a nude male here accompanied by a demurely clothed woman. In his humorous and witty take on Manet's trailblazing painting, Botero breathes new life into this classical genre by placing it within a decidedly contemporary context (much like Manet did a century before) that not only expands the limits of representation but disrupts the traditional power structure between genders—thus injecting his version with a surprisingly radical and feminist tone. Executed in the late 1960s, at a time in which societal norms and gender roles were being reassessed, Botero's painting suggests both a debt to its art historical antecedent and a possible response to these contemporary circumstances.

 

Likewise Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe conveys Botero's passion for life and for painting. In typical Botero fashion, the artist imbues every inch of this painting with an enhanced sense of vibrancy—an artistic effervescence or joie de vivre that is equally palatable in the main figures as it is in every fruit and blade of grass depicted.  This overall exuberance is what art historian Edward J. Sullivan refers to as the artist's constant "search for the inherent sensuality of the three-dimensional form—an ideal that is present in virtually everything Botero has created."²

 

 

 

 

1 The significance of this work is further reinforced by Botero's witty take on himself in the tongue in cheek painting, The Botero Exhibition (1975), illustrated below. Here the master of appropriation and reinvention turns his mimetic skills on himself and faithfully reproduces a number of his most iconic works, including Le Déjeuner sur l'Herbe. In an interesting play on reality and illusion, the painting within a painting depicts an exhibition of works by Botero with a familiar cast of guests enjoying the pictures.

 

2  Edward J. Sullivan, "Fernando Botero's Le Dejeuner sur l'Herbe," Latin American Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Prints, November 18 and 19, 1991 (New York: Sotheby's, 1991), Lot 42.