Pablo Picasso

M. Besnard (sold: Galerie Georges Petit, June 9, 1923, lot 97)

Max Linder, Paris

Antonio Santamarina Irazusta, Argentina (acquired by 1930 and sold: Sotheby's, London, April 2, 1974, lot 32)

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Buenos Aires, Jacques Helft, L'Ecole de Paris, 1951, no. 53

Buenos Aires, Dibujos, 1959, no. 64

John Richardson, A Life of Picasso, New York, 1991, vol. I, illustrated p. 168

The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. Turn of the century, 1900-1901, San Francisco, 2010, no. 1900-317, illustrated p. 89

Picasso executed Morphinomanes during his first trip to Paris in the fall of 1900. At this time, Picasso was working as an artist and illustrator in Madrid. Realizing that he needed to establish a foothold in the Parisian art world in order to advance his career, he arrived in Paris in September 1900 with his friend Carlos Casagemas and stayed for three months. During this time he visited the Louvre and the Luxembourg and made the rounds of the commercial galleries including Durand-Ruel, Bernheim-Jeune and Ambroise Vollard. Picasso was attracted to the works of contemporary illustrators such as Toulouse-Lautrec, who captured the excitement of the city in his swiftly executed drawings of the cabaret. This influence can be seen in the many cartoons and drawings which Picasso made of his trip including the drawing La Sortie de L'Exposition Universelle, Paris in which he depicts himself surrounded by a raucous group of friends after a visit to the Exposition Universelle. Picasso attended the Universal Exhibition several times during the weeks it was on view, first to see his own work, which was criticized for being hung too high, and then returned to see the paintings of David, Corot and Manet.

The nightlife of Paris proved to be a revelation to Picasso. His large oil Le Moulin de la Galette, now in the collection of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, conveyed the dynamism and energy he found in the cafes and concert halls of Montmartre as well as a darker view of this popular gathering place than that depicted in Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec or even Van Gogh’s imagery of the same location. According to John Richardson “Within weeks of arriving in Paris the nineteen-year-old Spaniard had established his right to a place in the modern French tradition….Picasso takes refuge in Spanish chiaroscuro—darkness lit up with incandescent splashes of crimson and yellow…. [he] evokes an erotic ambiance all the more exciting for being faintly menacing…. Whereas Toulouse-Lautrec’s gaslit dancers embody the ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay of the 1890s, Picasso’s hookers, with their mascara and lipstick, their cheek-to-cheek smooching, project a sexuality that is distinctly twentieth century” (J. Richardson, op. cit., p. 167). Executed in the same sojourn to Paris as Le Moulin de la Galette, Morphinomanes seems to follow the heavily-made up figures from the gaslit dancehall to a later point in the evening when inhibitions have been further diminished, the flower loosely held in the female figure at left’s hand seemingly the only remaining token of a more sober moment. The title of Morphinomanes clearly points to one of the drugs that were readily available in Paris at this time. Picasso himself would become a regular user of opium throughout his Blue and Rose periods, while during this first sojourn to Paris, Picasso’s dear friend Casagemas regularly sought out the relief of morphine to distract himself from the trials and tribulations of his romantic life.