Lot 116
  • 116

Pablo Picasso

Estimate
120,000 - 180,000 USD
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Description

  • Pablo Picasso
  • Mère et enfant
  • Signed Picasso and dated 17-1-21- (upper left)
  • Pencil on paper
  • 8 3/8 by 10 5/8 in.
  • 21.2 by 27 cm

Provenance

Galerie Rosengart, Lucerne
Private Collection (acquired from the above)
Thence by descent

Literature

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1920 à 1922, vol. IV, Paris, 1951, no. 235, illustrated pl. 82
The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, Neoclassicism I, 1920-1921, San Francisco, 1995, no. 21-023, illustrated p. 171
Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso, From the Ballets to Drama (1917-1926), Madrid, 1999, no. 966, illustrated p. 257 (titled Siesta in the Country)

Condition

Executed on buff colored wove paper laid down on card. Left edge is cut; top, bottom and right edge are deckled. Two tiny nicks to the top and bottom edges respectively. Evidence from a prior mounting in a few small spots along extreme top edge. Sheet is slightly time darkened. Some small pindots of foxing scattered throughout, otherwise fine. This work is in good condition.
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.

Catalogue Note

Picasso executed this image of a woman and child in January 1921. He returned to a similar scene several months later, in July of the same year, in a series of pencil drawings which culminated in La Source, now in the Musée Picasso in Paris, and the oil of the same title in the collection of Moderna Museet in Stockholm (see fig. 1). The origin of this imagery lies in Picasso’s travels in Italy in 1917, where he was inspired both by scenes of everyday rural life, and by the art of classical antiquity. During the winter of 1920-21, Picasso also found a source of inspiration in the works of the seventeenth-century master Nicolas Poussin. Although Poussin’s subject matter is primarily drawn from Biblical motifs and mythology, his classically inspired landscapes populated with figures depicted in a powerful Baroque style would have certainly appealed to Picasso during this period.

As Alfred Barr observed, around 1920 Picasso "began to take an interest in the style, the sentiment, the characters, the mythology of Greek and Roman antiquity… Picasso’s neo-classicism was, of course, a part of a broad, complex reaction against the excesses and violent originalities of prewar movements such as cubism, expressionism and primitivism. By 1920 cries of back to Poussin! back to Ingres! back to Seurat! rang through Paris… back to the Greeks and Romans!... During his Italian trip in 1917 he visited Pompeii, and doubtless the museums of classical art in Rome and Naples" (Alfred Barr, Picasso: Fifty Years of his Art, New York, 1966, p. 115).