Pablo Picasso

Acquired from the artist in 1946
Thence by descent

This painting is in good condition. The canvas has never been removed from its original stretcher. The paint layer is possibly lightly varnished. Under ultraviolet light it is possible to identify a small group of tiny retouches beneath the cherry on the right hand side. These are isolated and no further restoration is required. 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.
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The still-life was Picasso's preferred motif throughout the early 1940s as it offered a placid alternative to the stress that clouded daily life during this time.  Unlike many of his contemporaries, Picasso had no urgent need to leave Paris during the war, and continued to work at his studio at 7, rue des Grands-Augustins. By this point in his career, the artist was a celebrity and financially secure.  As he did not have to worry about selling his work, the paintings from this period remained in his studio, only to be exhibited after the war.  Rather than a vehicle for documenting the destructive reality that surrounded him, painting was for Picasso a world of creativity into which he could escape, and his pictures of this period certainly express his state of mind in his own artistic language.  As Frances Morris writes about the symbolism of Picasso's still-lifes of the early 1940s: "above all it was the still-life genre that Picasso developed into a tool capable of evoking the most complex blend of pathos and defiance, of despair to hope, balancing personal and universal experience in an expression of extraordinary emotional power" (Frances Morris, Paris Post War, Art and Existentialism 1945-1955 (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1993, p. 155).  

Beginning in 1943, cherries began to appear in Picasso's still-lifes and over the course of the following decade, appeared frequently in his work.  It was around this time that Picasso began his relationship with the young Francoise Gilot, who later recalled that the artist offered her a bowl of cherries upon first meeting her at a café in 1943. Painted in 1945, Nature morte aux cerises displays a spontaneity and vibrancy that are uncharacteristic of many of the artist's war-time still-lifes.  The present work is dominated by bright red cherries and lively strokes of brilliant blue pigment, perhaps heralding the beginning of a new sense of optimism.

Fig. 1 The artist in his Paris apartment, 1944. Photo courtesy of Rex Features.