巴布羅·畢加索

Paul Pétridès, Paris

Sale: Galerie Charpentier, Paris, 1st December 1959

Mr & Mrs Silvan Kocher, Solothurn (acquired by 1966)

Acquavella Galleries, Inc., New York

Elinor Dorrance Ingersoll (sold: Christie's, New York, 18th October 1977, lot 31)

Purchased at the above sale by the present owner

Lausanne, Galerie A. Gattlen, De Monet à Picasso, 1963, no. 14

Geneva, Musée de l'Athenée, Picasso, 1963, no. 4, illustrated in colour in the catalogue (titled Le jardin du Luxembourg)

Amsterdam, Van Gogh Museum & Barcelona, Museu Picasso, Picasso in Paris, 1900-1907. Eating Fire, 2011, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Pierre Daix, Georges Boudaille & Joan Rosselet, Picasso 1900-1906. Catalogue raisonné de l'œuvre peint, Neuchâtel, 1966, no. V.19, illustrated p. 167

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Supplement aux années 1892-1902, Paris, 1969, vol. 21, no. 206, illustrated pl. 81

Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso Vivo (1881-1907), Barcelona, 1980, no. 578, illustrated p. 231

The Picasso Project (ed.), Picasso's Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture. Turn of the Century, 1900-1901, San Francisco, 2010, no. 1901-211, illustrated p. 160

The board is stable and there is no evidence of retouching under ultra-violet light. Apart from some slight skimming to the lower left and right corners of the board, and one very small spot of pigment loss above the grass line in the centre right, this work is in very good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although slightly brighter in the original, particularly in the greens.
"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. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE 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 (fig. 2) to the fashionably dressed beau monde and extravagant courtesans (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’ (G. Coquiot, Cubistes, futurists, passéistes, 1914, reprinted 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 (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 24th June, and was favourably 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.’

 

According to Josep Palau i Fabre, 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 recognised 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.