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Lot Essay
Maya Widmaier Picasso has confirmed the authenticity of this work.
Filled with playful verve, Femme au collier is one of a group of works on paper that Picasso executed on the same day in 1952, all showing the upper half of a naked woman in various poses. The present work appears to show the subject smiling as she puts on a necklace, yet the fact that she is so at ease in her nakedness, which she intends to adorn with jewellery alone, gives the work an engaging, bohemian relish.
Femme au collier, like each of its sister images, was created using the barest yet most expressive shorthand. As if in tribute to Matisse, with whom he had become a good friend during recent years, Picasso has portrayed the woman with only a few lines. His deliberate economy of line allows the sheet to acquire a Matisse-like luminescence. However, the face and the feel of the picture are unmistakably Picasso's. There are raw and intensely vivacious qualities in the draughtsmanship, hinting at the artist's own enjoyment in the depiction of the woman. An intriguing hint of the style with which he had painted and drawn his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter in the early 1930s lingers in the work, and there is likewise a sense of the abandon and release that he enjoyed in those earlier days.
In terms of subject matter, Femme au collier is an expressly timeless piece. There are no obtrusive clues as to the age in which this picture is set - is it mythological, or contemporary? The same mystery figures in each of the works created on that day in August. The most overtly classicised work in this series is one of the first, showing a woman with a tambourine, as though she were indulging in some Bacchanals, yet even that is not explicitly a scene clearly set in the remote past.
Especially in his works from the 1950s onwards, Picasso mined the imagery of antique mythology for whimsical creatures and characters who would fill his creative output with the intensified character of life that he sought. Here, rather than an overtly classical work, we are presented with a timeless yet modern woman. Picasso has blurred the lines between the fantasy of his inner world world and modern life.
The summer that Picasso spent at Vallauris in 1952 was to be dramatic, overshadowed by his worsening relations with Françoise Gilot. This was the final season of his long relationship with her, and when he left Vallauris for Paris a few months later, he did so without her. The capricious imagery of Picasso's fantastical world of play and sensual diversion was therefore one that was intended not only to convey his infectious spirit to the viewer, but also perhaps to provide himself with an escapist vision of happiness.
Filled with playful verve, Femme au collier is one of a group of works on paper that Picasso executed on the same day in 1952, all showing the upper half of a naked woman in various poses. The present work appears to show the subject smiling as she puts on a necklace, yet the fact that she is so at ease in her nakedness, which she intends to adorn with jewellery alone, gives the work an engaging, bohemian relish.
Femme au collier, like each of its sister images, was created using the barest yet most expressive shorthand. As if in tribute to Matisse, with whom he had become a good friend during recent years, Picasso has portrayed the woman with only a few lines. His deliberate economy of line allows the sheet to acquire a Matisse-like luminescence. However, the face and the feel of the picture are unmistakably Picasso's. There are raw and intensely vivacious qualities in the draughtsmanship, hinting at the artist's own enjoyment in the depiction of the woman. An intriguing hint of the style with which he had painted and drawn his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter in the early 1930s lingers in the work, and there is likewise a sense of the abandon and release that he enjoyed in those earlier days.
In terms of subject matter, Femme au collier is an expressly timeless piece. There are no obtrusive clues as to the age in which this picture is set - is it mythological, or contemporary? The same mystery figures in each of the works created on that day in August. The most overtly classicised work in this series is one of the first, showing a woman with a tambourine, as though she were indulging in some Bacchanals, yet even that is not explicitly a scene clearly set in the remote past.
Especially in his works from the 1950s onwards, Picasso mined the imagery of antique mythology for whimsical creatures and characters who would fill his creative output with the intensified character of life that he sought. Here, rather than an overtly classical work, we are presented with a timeless yet modern woman. Picasso has blurred the lines between the fantasy of his inner world world and modern life.
The summer that Picasso spent at Vallauris in 1952 was to be dramatic, overshadowed by his worsening relations with Françoise Gilot. This was the final season of his long relationship with her, and when he left Vallauris for Paris a few months later, he did so without her. The capricious imagery of Picasso's fantastical world of play and sensual diversion was therefore one that was intended not only to convey his infectious spirit to the viewer, but also perhaps to provide himself with an escapist vision of happiness.