Pablo Picasso

Domingo Carles, Barcelona (acquired by 1932)
Barbey Collection, Barcelona (acquired by 1950)
Sale: Sotheby's London, June 28, 1988, lot 22
Private Collection (acquired at the above sale and sold: Christie's, New York, May 6, 2014, lot 46)
Acquired at the above sale

Paris, Galerie Berthe Weill, Exposition de peintures, pastels et dessins de MM. Girieud Launay, Picasso et Pichot, 1902, no. 4 (titled Luxembourg) 

Alejandro Cirici Pellicer, Picasso avant Picasso, Geneva, 1950, no. 63, illustrated n.p. (with incorrect dimensions and support)
Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1895 à 1906, vol. I, Paris, 1957, no. 54, illustrated pl. 24
Anthony Blunt & Phoebe Pool, Picasso: The Formative Years, A Study of His Sources, London, 1962, no. 102, illustrated n.p.
Pierre Daix & Georges Boudaille, Picasso, The Blue and Rose Periods: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1900-1906, London, 1967, no. VI.3, illustrated p. 193
Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso: The Early Years, 1881-1907, New York, 1981, no. 690, illustrated p. 274 (titled Scene in a Public Garden and with incorrect support)
The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture: Turn of the Century, 1900-1901, San Francisco, 2010, no. 1901-261, illustrated p. 182 (with incorrect support)

Overall the work is in very good condition. Oil on paper laid down on cradled panel. The pigments are bright and fresh. Minor frame abrasion is visible to the extreme edges. Under UV light: minor, conservative strokes of inpainting to the light blue clothing of the children at lower left, to the left part of the red dress at lower center, and possibly in a small area of green grass toward the top center edge. The original dark blue pigment fluoresces as is inherent to the medium. There is a fingerprint (presumably the artist's) in black to the right of the signature.
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.

"1901 was undoubtedly a seminal year for Picasso, and his bold entrance into the Paris art world—'the Spanish invasion' as one critic had it—set the tone for his future practice."

Barnaby Wright in Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901 (exhibition catalogue), The Courtauld Gallery, London, 2013, p. 13

Painted in the spring of 1901, the present composition depicts one of the spectacles of urban life that Picasso found so fascinating during his second trip to Paris. The artist spent his days exploring the capital, visiting the Louvre and galleries of the rue Laffitte and frequenting the cafés, dancehalls and brothels that featured in many of the works of Toulouse-Lautrec. Even in his paintings of traditional themes like still-lifes and mothers and children, Picasso favoured a palette and a technique that capture the energy and dazzle of this exciting chapter in his life. The scene here depicts children and their caretakers amidst the open-air splendor of the Luxembourg Gardens in spring. The composition is dominated by tones of blue and green, a palette that is often associated with Picasso’s emotional state following the death of his friend Casagemas earlier in the year. The present composition, however, depicts a convivial scene from the dawn of the artist’s famed Blue Period and is among the important pictures that helped establish Picasso as a leader among the avant-garde.

Picasso found in Paris a wealth of personal experiences and an endless source of artistic inspiration, from images of children playing in the park and street vendors (see fig. 2) to the fashionably dressed beau monde and extravagant courtesans (see fig. 3). The body of work that he executed during this short period of time proved to be the pivotal stage of his career. The importance of this year for the development of Picasso’s art was reflected in the recent highly acclaimed exhibition Becoming Picasso: Paris 1901 held at The Courtauld Gallery in London in 2013. Writing about this period in the artist’s career, the critic Gustave Coquiot remarked on Picasso’s unfettered enthusiasm for the sights and sounds of Paris: "If one considers the manner, the lively, precocious style, one quickly realizes that Picasso wants to see everything and wants to convey everything. The days obviously aren’t long enough for this impetuous lover of contemporary life. At this stage, he creates harmonies of light and colors, but he’s rather frantic and impatient, and rises ready-armed each morning, on the alert and full of energy" (Gustave Coquiot, Cubistes, futurists, passéistes, 1914, reprinted in Picasso, The Early Years, 1892-1906 (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1997, p. 146).

The present composition was painted during Picasso’s second trip to Paris, when he was accompanied by Jaume Andreu Bonsoms, a fellow countryman from Barcelona. He found lodgings at 130ter Boulevard de Clichy, in the studio of his friend Casagemas who had recently committed suicide. Picasso shared the studio with his first dealer Pere Mañach, occupying the larger of the two rooms, which served as both his bedroom and a studio (see fig. 1). During his first stay in Paris they had signed a two-year contract providing the artist with a monthly income of 150 francs in exchange for a proportion of his works. It was through Mañach’s efforts that Ambroise Vollard organised the first solo exhibition of Picasso’s art held in Paris, due to open at the end of June 1901. The first few weeks of this second Paris visit were spent in a frantic artistic activity in preparation for the show. The exhibition opened on June 24, and was favorably reviewed by Félicien Fagus in La Revue Blanche: "[Picasso] is the brilliant newcomer like all pure painters, he adores colour. Each influence is transitory […] one sees that Picasso’s haste has not yet given him time to forge a personal style; his personality is in his haste, this youthful impetuous spontaneity. I understand he is not yet twenty, and covers as many as three canvases a day."

The present work may have hung at that important exhibition at Ambroise Vollard's gallery, which effectively launched Picasso’s career in France. The year before, his work was included in a smaller exhibition at the gallery of Berthe Weill. But it was Vollard, known for his ability to recognise and promote new talent, that propelled the young Spaniard into the limelight. Picasso's own assessment of the exhibition was that it had, "some success. Almost all the papers have treated it favourably, which is something." The poet Max Jacob, whom Picasso would later feature in several paintings and drawings of the teens and twenties, confirmed that, "as soon as he arrived in Paris, [Picasso] had an exhibition at Vollard's, which was a veritable success" (quoted in Picasso, Challenging the Past (exhibition catalogue), National Gallery, London, 2009, p. 30). Following this important showing of his work and its overwhelmingly positive critical success, Picasso would be recognized as a major force among an emerging new generation of artists in Paris. The present composition vividly evidences the style and energy that his critics found so promising.