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Lot Essay
Late in life, with many of his artist friends dead or estranged, Picasso embarked on series of "dialogues" with past masters. In August 1959, he commenced a sequence of works based on Edouard Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe of 1863 (Wildenstein, no. 67; coll. Musée d'Orsay, Paris). By December 1961, when the series drew to a close, Picasso had completed 27 paintings and 138 drawings, of which the present work is one.
In discussing this series, Douglas Cooper has written: "Within the compass of his latest variations, Picasso embraces the whole nineteenth-century tradition and triumphantly establishes his independence and supremacy. In the Déjeuners, he has been able, through his virtuosity, to create a living relationship between his own art and the great achievements of the nineteenth century. And this affords yet another proof, should it still be necessary, that the technique and inventions of a great twentieth-century artist are in every way the equals of any we known from the past" (op. cit., pp. 34-35).
In discussing this series, Douglas Cooper has written: "Within the compass of his latest variations, Picasso embraces the whole nineteenth-century tradition and triumphantly establishes his independence and supremacy. In the Déjeuners, he has been able, through his virtuosity, to create a living relationship between his own art and the great achievements of the nineteenth century. And this affords yet another proof, should it still be necessary, that the technique and inventions of a great twentieth-century artist are in every way the equals of any we known from the past" (op. cit., pp. 34-35).