Pablo Picasso

The Zwemmer Gallery, London
Sale: Christie's, New York, November 14, 1984, lot 259
Acquired at the above sale

Executed on cream wove paper. Affixed to mount at upper corners on verso. Very minor surface dirt at extreme edges of sheet. Remnants of tape at four corners of sheet on verso. Line and sheet are very well preserved. Work is in excellent condition.
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This remarkable, previously unrecorded ink drawing depicts a bather instantly recognizable as Picasso's muse and mistress, Marie-Thérèse Walter. Picasso had met Walter in Paris some years before when she was only a teenager, famously approaching her outside the Metro and declaring, "I am Picasso! You and I are going to do great things together!" (quoted in Pierre Daix, Picasso, Life and Art, New York, 1993, p. 202). Picasso's affair with Marie-Thérèse was kept a well-guarded secret, not only because of his marriage to Olga Kokhlova, but because of her age. Nevertheless, in 1931 her presence - which had already begun to infiltrate his work, notably in the series of bathers at Dinard in 1928 and 1929 - became the catalyst for a crucial new departure in his work.

The present work is inscribed Boisgeloup, indicating that it was executed at the stately country residence Picasso acquired in 1930. For Picasso, Boisegeloup had a dual function: he had been seduced by the property's numerous and spacious servants quarters, in particular the stables, and very quickly drew up plans to convert them into a sculpture workshop. Perhaps more importantly, the mansion's location far from Paris in the Eure region of France allowed him to spend as much time as possible with Marie-Thérèse, hidden from the jealous gaze of his wife Olga. As Pierre Daix explains, it was in this idyllic setting, "that the extraordinary output from 1931 to 1934 was produced, with the heads and busts of Marie-Thérèse, and the abundance of assemblage sculptures that made this one of Picasso's most productive periods not only as a sculptor but in every medium, as most of the great lyrical paintings of Marie-Thérèse were also executed at Boisgeloup."

Femme au bain is a testimony to the incredible dialogue Picasso established between his two and three dimensional art during these years. At the heart of the composition is the iconic head of Marie-Thérèse, which, by 1933, literally defined the landscape at Boisgeloup (see fig. 1). Unlike Le repos du sculpteur (see fig. 2), executed on the same day as the present work, Femme au bain does not depict an actual sculpture, yet the exaggerated proportion of the head and emphatic profile line indicate a clear citation of the object. As Elizabeth Cowling notes, "The presence in the Boisgeloup studio of the heads and busts sparked by Walter had repercussions for Picasso's work in other media. Versions of the sculptures turn up in his paintings or drawings as protagonists in dramatised scenes exploring the nature of artistic creativity...and the influence of the living model" (Elizabeth Cowling, "The Sculptor's Studio: Picasso's Bust of a Woman, 1931", in Picasso's Marie-Thérèse (exhibition catalogue), Acquavella Galleries, Inc., New York, 2008, p. 38). This is a particularly important insight into the present drawing-- in works from this period featuring the sculptures themselves, Picasso was compelled to depict himself as an older, bearded creator, contemplating his handiwork with expertise and authority. Here, with the introduction of a fully formed woman, not Marie-Thérèse but a living avatar for Picasso's vision of her, the artist is reduced to a child-like state, peering timidly, full of curiosity and awe.

Fig. 1 Brassaï, Picasso's sculpture studio at Boisgeloup, 1932

Fig. 2 Pablo Picasso, Le repos de sculpteur, 1933, ink and ink wash on paper, sold at Sotheby's, Paris, June 3, 2010, lot 4, for $4,605,939