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Lot Essay
Picasso's La Suite des Saltimbanques, made at the very beginning of the artist's remarkable career as a printmaker, ranks as one of the greatest series of prints he ever made. The set includes every editioned print executed during the Blue and Rose Periods, and encompasses many of the most famous images created during this momentous phase of the artist's career. Following the success of the Saltimbanques, printmaking was to become a consuming passion for Picasso, and a central component of his creative output. Picasso was the most prolific printmaker of the twentieth century, producing 2,500 prints in various media during his lifetime.
"Could such an etching as Le Repas Frugal, universally recognized as a great work of art, suddenly be produced by Picasso, just as Athena sprung fully armed from Zeus's head?" (B. Baer, Picasso the printmaker: graphics from the Marina Picasso Collection, Dallas, 1983, p. 30). Picasso was only twenty-three when he executed the masterpiece Le Repas frugal, the largest and most imposing plate of La Suite des Saltimbanques, in 1904 - the year he established himself at the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre (see figs. 2 and 4). Remarkably, the print was the result of the artist's second attempt at etching, a technique in which he appears to have been given instruction by his Spanish friend Ricardo Canals (another inhabitant of the Bateau Lavoir) and Auguste Delâtre. This monumental portrait of human suffering and isolation, borne with dignity in the face of life's hardships, has become an icon of Picasso's Blue Period.
For Picasso, the Blue Period, which lasted from 1901-1904, originated with a personal tragedy; the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. The artist told his friend Pierre Daix: "It was thinking about Casagemas that got me starting painting in blue" (P. Daix, Picasso, Life and Art, London, 1987, p. 27). The tragedy precipitated Picasso's break with the superficiality of Parisian avant-garde painting, and a return to his own spiritual and artistic heritage originating with the religious art of El Greco and Zurbaràn. Indeed the extraordinary attenuation of form in Le Repas frugal derives from the mannerism of El Greco, lending the protagonists an air of ascetic spirituality. Apollinaire said of the spiritual dimension of Picasso's Blue Period: "His naturalism, with its love of precision, is combined with the mysticism that in Spain lies in the depth of the least religious souls" (Apollinaire, La Revue immoraliste).
Executed in 1905, the majority of the plates of the suite are the products of the Rose, or Harlequin Period, and depict the Saltimbanques or fairground mountebanks. Picasso became enthralled with the travelling acrobats and circus players when he first encountered them in the Esplanade des Invalides in 1904 (Palau i Fabre, Picasso Life and Work of the Early Years 1881-1907, Barcelona, 1980, p. 398). In the same year, the artist met and became a close friend of the poet Apollinaire, who encouraged Picasso to relinquish the melancholic Blue Period. The Blue Period can be seen to end with the painting La Vie (Barcelona, 1903), a commemorative tribute to Casagemas and the last major 'Blue' painting. The poet's influence was instrumental in the genesis of Picasso's Saltimbanques. Harlequins dominated the work of both Picasso and Apollinaire for the following eighteen months, and as John Richardson pointed out, La Suite des Saltimbanques looks as if it could have been a set of illustrations to Apollinaire's poems at that time (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. I, London, 1996, p. 334). The poem Un Fantôme des Nuées is a remarkable verbal equivalent to La Suite des Saltimbanques (see p.). Richardson goes on to conjecture that the suite might well have appeared alongside the poems if Apollinaire had not delayed their publication until 1913, by which time they had been sold to Vollard (op. cit., p. 508: see fig. 3). One of the plates, however, was indeed used to illustrate a book of poetry; Les deux Saltimbanques (Bloch 5), was issued as a frontispiece to the de luxe edition (of about twelve) of André Salmon's Poèmes, published in 1905.
In contrast to the Blue Period etchings of the suite (Le Repas frugal, Tête de Femme (Madeleine), and Les Pauvres (Bloch 1-3), all the Saltimbanque plates of the suite are executed in drypoint, with one exception. Unlike the dark, hatched work of the etchings, the drypoints are characterised by their linearity. In many of these drypoints Picasso models the figures with a single line, something he was to achieve again in La Suite Vollard of the 1930s. The silvery delicacy intrinsic to drypoint, and the purity of line, lend an ethereal quality to Les Saltimbanques. In his review of the suite, Apollinaire remarked that 'Picasso's taste for pure line which recedes, changes and penetrates produced almost unique examples of linear drypoints.'
The theatricality, mannered gestures and fragile grace of the Saltimbanques as they are represented at rest, dancing or performing on horseback, lift them from common humanity into a magical, unreal world. These images of the Saltimbanques fulfil an ideal of beauty which Picasso was not to aspire to again until his classical period in the 1920s and 30s.
"Could such an etching as Le Repas Frugal, universally recognized as a great work of art, suddenly be produced by Picasso, just as Athena sprung fully armed from Zeus's head?" (B. Baer, Picasso the printmaker: graphics from the Marina Picasso Collection, Dallas, 1983, p. 30). Picasso was only twenty-three when he executed the masterpiece Le Repas frugal, the largest and most imposing plate of La Suite des Saltimbanques, in 1904 - the year he established himself at the Bateau Lavoir in Montmartre (see figs. 2 and 4). Remarkably, the print was the result of the artist's second attempt at etching, a technique in which he appears to have been given instruction by his Spanish friend Ricardo Canals (another inhabitant of the Bateau Lavoir) and Auguste Delâtre. This monumental portrait of human suffering and isolation, borne with dignity in the face of life's hardships, has become an icon of Picasso's Blue Period.
For Picasso, the Blue Period, which lasted from 1901-1904, originated with a personal tragedy; the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. The artist told his friend Pierre Daix: "It was thinking about Casagemas that got me starting painting in blue" (P. Daix, Picasso, Life and Art, London, 1987, p. 27). The tragedy precipitated Picasso's break with the superficiality of Parisian avant-garde painting, and a return to his own spiritual and artistic heritage originating with the religious art of El Greco and Zurbaràn. Indeed the extraordinary attenuation of form in Le Repas frugal derives from the mannerism of El Greco, lending the protagonists an air of ascetic spirituality. Apollinaire said of the spiritual dimension of Picasso's Blue Period: "His naturalism, with its love of precision, is combined with the mysticism that in Spain lies in the depth of the least religious souls" (Apollinaire, La Revue immoraliste).
Executed in 1905, the majority of the plates of the suite are the products of the Rose, or Harlequin Period, and depict the Saltimbanques or fairground mountebanks. Picasso became enthralled with the travelling acrobats and circus players when he first encountered them in the Esplanade des Invalides in 1904 (Palau i Fabre, Picasso Life and Work of the Early Years 1881-1907, Barcelona, 1980, p. 398). In the same year, the artist met and became a close friend of the poet Apollinaire, who encouraged Picasso to relinquish the melancholic Blue Period. The Blue Period can be seen to end with the painting La Vie (Barcelona, 1903), a commemorative tribute to Casagemas and the last major 'Blue' painting. The poet's influence was instrumental in the genesis of Picasso's Saltimbanques. Harlequins dominated the work of both Picasso and Apollinaire for the following eighteen months, and as John Richardson pointed out, La Suite des Saltimbanques looks as if it could have been a set of illustrations to Apollinaire's poems at that time (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. I, London, 1996, p. 334). The poem Un Fantôme des Nuées is a remarkable verbal equivalent to La Suite des Saltimbanques (see p.). Richardson goes on to conjecture that the suite might well have appeared alongside the poems if Apollinaire had not delayed their publication until 1913, by which time they had been sold to Vollard (op. cit., p. 508: see fig. 3). One of the plates, however, was indeed used to illustrate a book of poetry; Les deux Saltimbanques (Bloch 5), was issued as a frontispiece to the de luxe edition (of about twelve) of André Salmon's Poèmes, published in 1905.
In contrast to the Blue Period etchings of the suite (Le Repas frugal, Tête de Femme (Madeleine), and Les Pauvres (Bloch 1-3), all the Saltimbanque plates of the suite are executed in drypoint, with one exception. Unlike the dark, hatched work of the etchings, the drypoints are characterised by their linearity. In many of these drypoints Picasso models the figures with a single line, something he was to achieve again in La Suite Vollard of the 1930s. The silvery delicacy intrinsic to drypoint, and the purity of line, lend an ethereal quality to Les Saltimbanques. In his review of the suite, Apollinaire remarked that 'Picasso's taste for pure line which recedes, changes and penetrates produced almost unique examples of linear drypoints.'
The theatricality, mannered gestures and fragile grace of the Saltimbanques as they are represented at rest, dancing or performing on horseback, lift them from common humanity into a magical, unreal world. These images of the Saltimbanques fulfil an ideal of beauty which Picasso was not to aspire to again until his classical period in the 1920s and 30s.