Pablo Picasso

Estate of the artist (inv. 7340)
Marina Picasso (the artist's granddaughter; by descent from the above)
Acquired from the above by the late owner

Munich, Haus der Kunst; Cologne, Josef-Haubrich-Kunsthalle; Frankfurt, Städtische Galerie im Städelschen Kunstinstitut & Zurich, Kunsthaus, Collection Marina Picasso, 1981-82, no. 43, illustrated in the catalogue
Venice, Centro di Cultura di Palazzo Grassi, Picasso, Opere dal 1895 al 1971 dalla Collezione Marina Picasso, 1981, no. 49, illustrated in the catalogue
Tokyo, National Gallery of Modern Art & Kyoto, Municipal Museum Kyoto, Picasso, Masterpieces from Marina Picasso Collection and from Museums in USA and USSR, 1983, no. 24, illustrated in the catalogue
Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria & Sidney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Picasso, 1984, no. 169
London, Royal Academy of Arts, Je suis le Cahier, The Sketchbooks of Picasso, 1986, no. 1-51, illustrated in the catalogue
London, Lefevre Gallery, Picasso, Works on paper, Barcelona, Blue and Pink Periods, from the Collection of Marina Picasso, 1988, no. 20 (incorrectly numbered "carnet no. 35")
New York, Jan Krugier Gallery, Picasso "Petits Formats", Works from the Marina Picasso Collection, 1989, no. 52
Barcelona, Museo Picasso & Bern, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Picasso 1905-1906, 1992, no. 50, illustrated in the catalogue
Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin & Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Linie, Licht und Schatten. Meisterzeichnungen und Skulpturen der Sammlung Jan und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 1999, no. 124, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Venice, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, The Timeless Eye. Master Drawings from the Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection, 1999, no. 142, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Miradas sin Tiempo. Dibujos, Pinturas y Esculturas de la Coleccion Jan y Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2000, no. 171, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Vienna, Albertina Museum, Goya bis Picasso. Meisterwerke der Sammlung Jan Krugier und Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski, 2005, no. 126, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Barcelona, Museu Picasso, Picasso i el circ, 2006-07, no. 79, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Josep Palau I Fabre, Picasso Vivo, 1881 - 1907, Infancia y primera de un demiurgo, Barcelona, 1980, no. 1107, illustrated in colour p. 413
Arnold & Marc Glimcher, Je suis le cahier, The Sketchbooks of Picasso (exhibition catalogue), The Pace Gallery, New York, 1986; Catalogue raisonné by Matthew Marks, carnet no. 35 catalogued on p. 311 and illustrated pp. 20-50, the present work illustrated in colour p. 43
John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, 1881-1906, New York, 1991, vol. I, illustrated p. 346
Picasso 1917-1924, Le Voyage d'Italie (exhibition catalogue), Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 1998, illustrated p. 33
Philip Rylands, The Timeless Eye. Master Drawings from the Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski Collection (exhibition catalogue), Berlin, 1999, illustrated p. 413

Executed on cream wove paper taken from a sketchbook, the perforations of which can be seen along the left edge. The sheet is glued to the mount at each corner and floating in the mount. The leftmost part of the extreme left edge has been folded onto itself. The sheet is slightly time stained and there is some staining to the centre and lower right edge of the sheet. There is a spot of foxing to the centre of the lower edge. The colours remain fresh and the red intense. This work is in overall very good condition.
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Saltimbanque assis (Le bouffon)is a seminal image from a formative period in Pablo Picasso’s development. Executed in 1905, and originally forming part of what is now known as sketchbook number 35 (previously known as sketchbook no. 24), it marks Picasso’s move away from his blue period, and transition into his rose period. Though Picasso had depicted some of his now iconic cast of circus characters as early as 1901, it was not until 1904 - by which time he had moved permanently to Paris - that the circus and its motley troupe became the central theme in his work. The world of the circus provided fertile ground for Picasso’s continuing artistic explorations into the theme of loneliness: during his preceding blue period years he had already identified with these characters for their status as outsiders. Even once he became more established in the art-scene of Montmartre, the circus continued to inspire him and from his studio in Montmartre he would make frequent trips to the nearby Médrano circus, which he would often visit several times a week. The small size of the sketchbook in question suggests that it was very much a working document, that he would carry along with him in his pocket, jotting down ideas as they came to him on the street and in cafés as well as on his regular Médrano visits. In amongst his more resolved depictions in his carnet, of which the present work is an excellent example, were everyday notes including lists of paint colours, financial calculations, friends’ addresses and even laundry lists.

Picasso’s key focus in 1904-1905 was his extraordinarily ambitious painting La Famille des Saltimbanques which, at more than two metres high and across, marked his first attempt at a large-scale painting, and which is now in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington. Sketchbook 35 introduces us to all five characters of the painting, and helps to clarify the evolution of the great masterpiece. Though huddled together physically, all six performers in the painting remain somehow trapped in their own remote selves, their vacant glances dissecting the composition in various different directions. The tragi-comic character of the overweight jester, of the present work, ranks as one of the highlights and most fully worked pages of this rare and important preparatory sketchbook and is also striking for its bold red colour, which marks a decisive break from his preceding colder palette.  

E.A. Carmean, Jr. has described the fat jester as ‘one of the most familiar of the saltimbanque cast’ and puts the present work in the context of the numerous gouaches and drawings of the same subject, as well as its most compositionally direct counterpart, the drypoint Seated Saltimbanque, also of 1905. Of course Picasso was not the first artist to find inspiration in the lonely lives of traveling performers, and other modern artists including Daumier, Cézanne, Degas, Seurat and Toulouse-Lautrec had all harnessed the creative potential of this theme. Marilyn McCully has argued that ‘while other artists before him […] had taken up the subjects of these performers, what Picasso accomplished was to turn the theme of saltimbanques into his subject. The poetic world that they inhabited and that he depicted became the stuff of what Coquiot would later - principally with reference to the change in Picasso’s palette - describe as his Rose Period’ (Marilyn McCully, Picasso in Paris, 1900-1907, London, 2011, p. 142). The jester of the present work, with his glazed look of exhaustion and isolation, is testament to the inherent contradictions of being a performer in-turn-of-the-century Paris, of how you could be surrounded by people yet lonely, and how life could be frenetic and exhilarating one moment and deadly boring the next. It was these inherent contradictions that Picasso could relate to and which provided the basis for his intriguing psychological explorations of this subject.

Like the vast majority of his sketchbooks, carnet 35 stayed in Picasso’s possession until his death, when it was inherited by his grand-daughter Marina. Discussing the significance of this aspect of his artistic output, Arnold Glimcher has remarked that ‘we might say the sketchbooks are Picasso. They are a legacy by which we may decipher the process of Picasso’s creativity and understand the cohesive totality of his lifework’ (Glimcher & Glimcher, 1986, op. cit., p. 1). Later in life, Picasso himself highlighted the importance of his sketchbooks when he stated, ‘I picked up my sketchbooks daily, saying to myself “What will I learn of myself that I didn’t know?” And when it isn’t me anymore who is talking but the drawings I made, and when they escape and mock me, then I know I have achieved my goal’ (ibid., p. 2).