PABLO PICASSO | Le Peintre et son modèle

Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris
Acquired from the above in 1964

Paris, Galerie Louise Leiris, Picasso, peintures, 1962-1963, Paris, 1964, no. 56, illustrated in the catalogue

Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Oeuvres de 1962 et 1963, vol. XXIII, Paris, 1971, no. 258, illustrated p. 122

The work is in excellent condition. The canvas is unlined. There is a one small spot of light indentation in the lower right quadrant. Under UV inspection, no inpainting is present.
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Painted in 1963, Le Peintre et son modèle exemplifies the dynamic force of Picasso’s late work on a magnificent scale. Picasso presents a panegyric to the powerful relationship between artist and model. The male figure, a recognizable amalgamation of self portraiture, paints a female nude reminiscent of the women painted by Rubens, Ingres and Goya (see figs. 1-3). With its foundation in this trajectory of art history, Le Peintre et son modèle is a monumental and dynamic depiction of this historic theme. Throughout the spring of 1963, Picasso executed a series of paintings on the theme of the painter and his model, one of the great recurring motifs of his late work. “Picasso painted, drew and etched this subject so many times in his life that, as Michel Leiris has remarked, it almost became a genre in itself like landscape or still-life. In 1963 and 1964 he painted almost nothing else, the painter armed with his attributes, palette and brushes, the canvas on an easel, mostly seen from the side. Like a screen and the nude model seated or reclining in a space which presents all the characteristics of an artist’s studio, the big window, the sculpture on a stool, the folding screen the lamp, the divan, etc. All these stage props have nothing to do with Picasso’s real situation; he always painted without a palette and without an easel, directly onto a canvas laid flat. This is therefore not so much a record of his own work as an ‘epitome’ of a profession” (Marie-Laure Bernadac, Late Picasso (exhibition catalogue), Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 74).

Throughout this series of canvases, the figure of the painter almost exclusively occupies the left-hand side of the composition, while the nude female model occupies the right half. Never tiring of exploring visual means of depicting erotic tension, in the years to follow Picasso developed a number of variations on this theme, always characterized by a great spontaneity in brushwork and coloration, not to mention an extraordinary creative energy. While in the later variations of this theme men and women are seen in assorted costumes, such as those of musicians or musketeers, in the 1963 series the protagonists are unmistakably the artist himself and the model he is painting, often divided by the vertical line of the easel between them. However, rather than dedicated solely to the process of painting and modeling, the two figures are involved in the game of seduction, with the artist’s brushes wittily suggestive of the man’s desire for his female subject and of the erotic tension between them. 

Picasso had devoted a large portion of his production throughout the 1960s to the reinterpretation of the Old Masters, reaffirming his connection to some of the greatest painters in the history of art. His series of musketeers, commenced several years after Le Peintre et son modèle began, represent, according to his wife Jacqueline Roque, "when Picasso started to study Rembrandt.” His interest in Rembrandt’s work, however, was longstanding. Indeed just two weeks before he painted the present composition, he executed a work entitled Rembrandt and Saskia. Michael Fitzgerald states, “He painted Rembrandt and Saskia, based on the Dutch master’s portrait of himself and his wife (circa 1635; Dresden). Picasso had admired Rembrandt’s art (particularly his prints) since at least the thirties. During his last decade he showed a particular appreciation for two, apparently contradictory, aspects of his predecessor’s work—the unflattering realism of Rembrandt’s late style, particularly self-portraits and depictions of the female nude, and the ornamental costumes of his early phase” (Michael Fitzgerald, Picasso, The Artist’s Studio (exhibition catalogue), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford & Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 2001-02, p. 57).

The motif of the female nude fascinated Picasso throughout his career, and in the present work he sets her sumptuous figure with precision. In various periods of his work, Picasso’s art was closely related to his personal life and the women depicted in his paintings were always influenced by Picasso’s female companions at the time. In Le Peintre et son modèle, the female figure is inspired by Jacqueline, the last love of his life, whom Picasso married in 1961. Although she is not a direct likeness of Jacqueline, with her characteristic hairstyle, she bears the features with which Picasso usually portrayed his last muse.