Lot Essay
In May 1906, Ambroise Vollard bought twenty of Picasso's important early works, for which he paid the artist two thousand francs. Picasso suddenly had more money than ever before; feeling that he was finally a "success" after many lean years, he decided to visit his parents in Barcelona, whom he had not seen in two years. He also used the occasion to introduce his fiancée Fernande Olivier to his family and friends. However, the most important part of this trip for Picasso would be a summer-long stay in the remote village of Gósol, high in the Pyrenées, far from the stress and bustle of Paris.
For Picasso the Gósol summer...prompted many kinds of regression to ethnic and primitive roots, the Spanish equivalent, we might say, of Gauguin's and Bernard's sojourns in Pont-Aven. Not only did it stir in him a fresh sense of his Spanish origins but it triggered a broader fascination with a remote world, unpolluted by modern history, that echoed back to classical antiquity. (R. Rosenblum, "Picasso in Gósol: The Calm before the Storm," in exh. cat., Picasso: The Early Years, 1892-1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1997, p. 268)
The pale pink tints of the artist's Rose Period palette gave way to the rugged, reddish terracotta color that was all-pervasive in these primitive surroundings. In a series of major paintings of youthful figures, Picasso brought together his growing interest with archaic and Hellenistic sculpture, and his love of Ingres. "The salubrious Pyrenées were more conducive to intense work than Paris. As well as finding ever simpler solutions to ever more complicated problems, Picasso was astoundingly prolific. During the ten weeks or so he spent in Gósol, he achieved as much as he had in the previous six months, if not more..." (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, New York, 1991, vol. I (1881-1906, The Early Years), p. 441). The experimental paintings, drawings and sculpture of his Gósol summer set in motion a wealth of fresh ideas that would carry Picasso through Les demoiselles d'Avignon, painted in the following year, and well into his Neoclassical phase.
Among the important pictures which Picasso painted that summer is La toilette (Zervos, vol. I, no. 325; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo). The present work is the only known watercolor study for La toilette. Apart from the positioning of the feet in the right-hand figure, the artist's conception in this study is virtually complete.
As John Richardson has pointed out, while Picasso had known Fernande for almost two years, it was not until their stay in Gósol that her image became important to the artist's work. Indeed, while in Gósol, Picasso's attention shifted from Kouros-like male youths to the female form of his mistress, and she appears in most of the paintings of female subjects which Picasso painted that summer.
The mirror is an important emblem for Fernande: she was forever primping, hence the recurrent coiffures in the work of the next six months. The mirror also serves as a pretext for the juxtaposition of two standing women--a compositional problem for which the artist would always be finding new solutions. And it enables Picasso to play games with a mistress's identity. In La toilette and numerous related studies, both figures depict Fernande. Except for her hair is anomalously black and glossy, the figure on the right looks much as she does in photographs of the period, wearing a simple "artistic" dress wound around with a sash such as Spanish men--Picasso for one--often wore, but not Spanish women. The figure on the left has Fernandes's auburn hair but a very different, far less voluptuous, body: this alter ego is tall, lithe and long-legged--everything that Fernande was not. Picasso implies that his brush can enhance her beauty, just as his love can enhance her life. La toilette pays tribute to the metamorphic power of art and love. (J. Richardson, op. cit., pp. 444-445)
For Picasso the Gósol summer...prompted many kinds of regression to ethnic and primitive roots, the Spanish equivalent, we might say, of Gauguin's and Bernard's sojourns in Pont-Aven. Not only did it stir in him a fresh sense of his Spanish origins but it triggered a broader fascination with a remote world, unpolluted by modern history, that echoed back to classical antiquity. (R. Rosenblum, "Picasso in Gósol: The Calm before the Storm," in exh. cat., Picasso: The Early Years, 1892-1906, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1997, p. 268)
The pale pink tints of the artist's Rose Period palette gave way to the rugged, reddish terracotta color that was all-pervasive in these primitive surroundings. In a series of major paintings of youthful figures, Picasso brought together his growing interest with archaic and Hellenistic sculpture, and his love of Ingres. "The salubrious Pyrenées were more conducive to intense work than Paris. As well as finding ever simpler solutions to ever more complicated problems, Picasso was astoundingly prolific. During the ten weeks or so he spent in Gósol, he achieved as much as he had in the previous six months, if not more..." (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, New York, 1991, vol. I (1881-1906, The Early Years), p. 441). The experimental paintings, drawings and sculpture of his Gósol summer set in motion a wealth of fresh ideas that would carry Picasso through Les demoiselles d'Avignon, painted in the following year, and well into his Neoclassical phase.
Among the important pictures which Picasso painted that summer is La toilette (Zervos, vol. I, no. 325; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo). The present work is the only known watercolor study for La toilette. Apart from the positioning of the feet in the right-hand figure, the artist's conception in this study is virtually complete.
As John Richardson has pointed out, while Picasso had known Fernande for almost two years, it was not until their stay in Gósol that her image became important to the artist's work. Indeed, while in Gósol, Picasso's attention shifted from Kouros-like male youths to the female form of his mistress, and she appears in most of the paintings of female subjects which Picasso painted that summer.
The mirror is an important emblem for Fernande: she was forever primping, hence the recurrent coiffures in the work of the next six months. The mirror also serves as a pretext for the juxtaposition of two standing women--a compositional problem for which the artist would always be finding new solutions. And it enables Picasso to play games with a mistress's identity. In La toilette and numerous related studies, both figures depict Fernande. Except for her hair is anomalously black and glossy, the figure on the right looks much as she does in photographs of the period, wearing a simple "artistic" dress wound around with a sash such as Spanish men--Picasso for one--often wore, but not Spanish women. The figure on the left has Fernandes's auburn hair but a very different, far less voluptuous, body: this alter ego is tall, lithe and long-legged--everything that Fernande was not. Picasso implies that his brush can enhance her beauty, just as his love can enhance her life. La toilette pays tribute to the metamorphic power of art and love. (J. Richardson, op. cit., pp. 444-445)