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Lot Essay
Executed in 1969, Homme à la pipe assis depicts a débonnaire gentleman, dressed in the cavalier style of the 17th Century, enjoying his pipe. Like the many musketeers portraits of his later years, as well as the many portraits by the 17th Century Dutch masters upon which this series is loosely based, Picasso depicts a character full of dandified elegance and joie de vivre. As Gert Schiff has noted:
In December 1966 an army of seventeenth-century soldiers invaded Picasso's pictorial worlds. These soldiers of fortune, soldiers-adventurers, Spaniards of the Golden Age he referred to colloquially as 'musketeers'. The first contingent, mostly heads and busts, had austure faces surrounded by long hair, ruffs and collars. Soon, however, Picasso, was depicting musketeers as full-length figures supporting swords, sabres, muskets, or even the big lances with which cavalrymen of the 1600s were armed. At this point, we see them clad in doublets, fancy hose, belts in vivid colors, embroidered with gold and silver, and hats adorned with multicolored plumes... Where did Picasso's musketeers come from? Apart from a lifelong love of masquerade, they came out of childhood memories... However, their immediate source was disclosed by Jacqueline in conversation with Malraux: 'They came to Pablo when he'd gone back to studying Rembrandt'. (G. Schiff, Picasso, The Last Years, 1963-1973, New York, 1983, pp. 30-31).
For Picasso, his musketeers and cavaliers were glamorous, youthful alter egos, men full of bonhommie who enjoyed all the pleasures of life to the full. Missing these pleasures himself in his old age, Picasso sought to celebrate them through his painting and thus indulge in them by proxy.
In Homme à la pipe assis, Picasso has not only imitated the manner in which smoking was celebrated as an elegant and thoroughly modern habit in the 17th Century, but in the manner of the painting's execution he has imitated the flamboyant mastery over his materials that is also characteristic of Frans Hals. In complete command of the medium, Picasso deliberately indulged in its messiness and allowed the sweeps and swirls of paint to remain from the initial splash of their application. Picasso deftly captures the features and character of his cavalier in a few swift but precise marks to suggest an atmosphere of revelry.
In December 1966 an army of seventeenth-century soldiers invaded Picasso's pictorial worlds. These soldiers of fortune, soldiers-adventurers, Spaniards of the Golden Age he referred to colloquially as 'musketeers'. The first contingent, mostly heads and busts, had austure faces surrounded by long hair, ruffs and collars. Soon, however, Picasso, was depicting musketeers as full-length figures supporting swords, sabres, muskets, or even the big lances with which cavalrymen of the 1600s were armed. At this point, we see them clad in doublets, fancy hose, belts in vivid colors, embroidered with gold and silver, and hats adorned with multicolored plumes... Where did Picasso's musketeers come from? Apart from a lifelong love of masquerade, they came out of childhood memories... However, their immediate source was disclosed by Jacqueline in conversation with Malraux: 'They came to Pablo when he'd gone back to studying Rembrandt'. (G. Schiff, Picasso, The Last Years, 1963-1973, New York, 1983, pp. 30-31).
For Picasso, his musketeers and cavaliers were glamorous, youthful alter egos, men full of bonhommie who enjoyed all the pleasures of life to the full. Missing these pleasures himself in his old age, Picasso sought to celebrate them through his painting and thus indulge in them by proxy.
In Homme à la pipe assis, Picasso has not only imitated the manner in which smoking was celebrated as an elegant and thoroughly modern habit in the 17th Century, but in the manner of the painting's execution he has imitated the flamboyant mastery over his materials that is also characteristic of Frans Hals. In complete command of the medium, Picasso deliberately indulged in its messiness and allowed the sweeps and swirls of paint to remain from the initial splash of their application. Picasso deftly captures the features and character of his cavalier in a few swift but precise marks to suggest an atmosphere of revelry.