巴布羅·畢加索

Dr. Maurice Girardin, Paris 
Paul Rosenberg & Co., New York
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon (acquired from the above in October 1958)

Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art, French Paintings from The Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon and Mrs. Mellon Bruce, Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Exhibition, 1941-1966, cat. no. 193, illustrated

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, vol XXI, Paris, 1969, cat. no. 248, pl. 95, illustrated 
Josep Palau i Fabre, Picasso, The Early Years, 1881-1907, Barcelona, 1985, cat. no. 560, p. 226, illustrated
Pierre Daix & Georges Boudaille, Picasso 1900-1906, Catalogue raisonné de l’oeuvre peint, Neuchâtel, 1966, cat. no. V.54, p. 178, illustrated (incorrectly stating that this is not in Zervos)
The Picasso Project, ed., Picasso’s Paintings, Watercolors, Drawings and Sculpture, Turn of the Century, 1900-1901, San Francisco, 2010, cat. nos. 1901-107, p. 128, illustrated

Very good condition. Oil on board mounted to a cradled panel. Slight abrasions and losses to the edges. Under UV light, tiny spots of retouching where the artist pin holes originally were and a few specks in the sky are visible. The colors are fresh and the surface is stable.
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.
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Painted in Barcelona in 1901, this charming scene depicts a group of women and children playing on the beach, a motif that the artist repeatedly returned to throughout his career. It also represents a fundamentally important period in Picasso’s life when he first assumed his own distinct artistic identity. As a member of the group of artists who gathered at Els Quatre Gats in Barcelona before the turn of the century, Picasso’s earliest works were informed by the striking, decorative style cultivated by painters such as Ramon Casas. However, following his first visit to Paris in 1900, the young artist soon developed a boldly individual approach which he further cultivated the following year in both Spain and France. The present composition depicts an early rendition of the beach scenes which endlessly fascinated Picasso, and has been energetically worked in loose, richly loaded brushstrokes which also evoke the posture of the figures. The domesticity of the composition echoes those which he was soon to paint in Paris, which featured women and children in the streets and public parks (fig. 1 & 2).

1901 was a year of peripatetic movement for Picasso. After his return from Paris he was enjoined to relocate to Madrid by a fellow Catalonian, Francisco de Asís Soler. Soler suggested that Picasso help him produce a magazine devoted to the art of the Spanish avant-garde which was to be called Arte Joven. Despite the best of intentions - Picasso paid a whole years rent on his apartment - neither this publication, nor Picasso’s stay in Madrid lasted long, but it afforded him the opportunity of travelling to Toledo to study El Greco’s work first-hand as well as working towards several exhibitions. According to John Richardson: ‘Picasso threw himself into the production of the magazine. But this new responsibility bored him. If he had indeed gone to Madrid ‘in further quest of himself’, he must have realized that he was wasting his time: doing the wrong job in the wrong place’ ( J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, London, 1991, vol. I, p. 178). The tragic suicide of his friend Casagemas in Paris on 17th January precipitated Picasso’s decision to leave Madrid and return to Paris, and set in motion the emotions which would colour the Blue Period. Before travelling to France he went home to Barcelona for two weeks in which he reengaged with his old friend in Els Quatre Gats as well as painting a prodigious number of canvases, which John Richardson suggests ‘he hoped would attract French buyers’ (ibid., p. 190).

These canvases included bullfight scenes (fig. 3), cabarets, beach scenes such as the present work, and impressionistic seascapes. In Paris Picasso shared a studio with his first dealer Pere Mañach, occupying the larger of the two rooms, which served as both his bedroom and a studio. The previous year 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."

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  eritable 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.