Pablo Picasso

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Niveau Gallery, New York
Wally Findlay Gallery, New York
Acquired from the above in 1972

Columbia, South Carolina, Columbia Museum of Art, Carolina Collects, 2008

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1969, vol. XXXI, Paris, 1976, no. 132, illustrated pl. 41
The Picasso Project, Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, The Sixties III, 1968-69, San Francisco, 1997, no. 69-133, illustrated p. 136

This painting on cardboard is stable and in very healthy state. It has probably never been cleaned or varnished. The white color of the face and the ruff seems to have acquired a dirt layer, as presumably have the other colors areas, the hair and the remainder of the costume. However, one should be careful in cleaning this work so as not to disturb the un-painted cardboard or any of the pencil marks which are integral to the composition. Tests that were made to the paint layer on sight do not give the impression that the painting will clean sufficiently and I recommend that it be sold as is. The above condition report has been provided by Simon Parkes of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc. 502 East 74th St. New York, NY 212-734-3920, simonparkes@msn.com , an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's.
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.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

"I have less and less time and I have more and more to say," Picasso lamented in his final decade (quoted in K. Gallwitz, Picasso Laureatus, Lausanne & Paris, 1971, p. 166).  During these years, a major focus of his production was the portraits of men in various costumes, collectively referred to as his Musketeer series.  These paintings, which are understood to be representations of Picasso's alter-ego, reveal the artist's attempt to ward off death with a final burst of creativity.  Having gone through so many phases of stylistic and technical experimentation, Picasso now pared down his style in order to paint works in quick, spontaneous brush-strokes.  Rather than ponder the details of his human anatomy, he isolated elements of his subject that fascinated and preoccupied him, and depicted them with a bold, contemporary style and wit.  Further, in recasting the iconography of old master painters such as Rembrandt and Velázquez, Picasso is, at the end of his career, consciously aligning himself with the greatest artists of the Western canon.

As Simonetta Fraquelli has written, "In an era when non-figurative art was prevailing over figurative art and linear progression of 'style' was considered more relevant than emotion and subject, it was customary for many younger artists and critics to think of late Picasso as lesser Picasso.  However, the extensive re-evaluation of his late work since his death has highlighted its undiminished power and originality.  His capacity for emotional depth and painterly freedom of his late painting, together with his wide-ranging engagement with imagery of the great paintings of the past, was to have a lasting influence on the development of neo-expressionist art from the early 1980s onwards" (Simonetta Fraquelli, 'Looking at the Past to Defy the Present: Picasso's Painting 1946-1973,' in Picasso: Challenging the Past (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery, London, 2009, p. 146).

The artist photograph: Edward Quinn