Lot Essay
A deeply tender and intimate portrait of the artist’s great muse and love, Dormeuse (Marie-Thérèse Walter) was painted exactly a decade to the day after the couple had first met. It was a cold evening on 8 January 1927 that Picasso caught sight of a young woman with piercing blue eyes and bright blonde hair outside the Galeries Lafayette, a department store in Paris. Marie-Thérèse had just purchased a blouse with a wide Peter Pan collar, a col Claudine, that was all the rage in 1920s Paris. Captivated, Picasso introduced himself, ‘You have an interesting face,’ he said to her. ‘I would like to do a portrait of you. I feel we are going to do great things together. I am Picasso’ (quoted in J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, The Triumphant Years, 1917-1932, vol. III, London, 2007, p. 323).
This now-legendary meeting marked the beginning of a love affair that would come to define Picasso’s life and art of the following years. Wearing her col Claudine, and pictured with her distinctive undulating, smooth profile, this portrait shows the long-lasting, deep romance of the couple, standing as a testament to the ongoing artistic inspiration the artist found in her presence and physiognomy. With her head resting on her hand, and her closed eyes rendered with a single curving line, in this work, Picasso has captured his lover unawares, relishing the purity and innocence of his model lost in the reverie of dream. This work remained in Picasso’s personal collection for the rest of his life.
One of Picasso’s favorite ways of depicting Marie-Thérèse was when she was in the throes of slumber. Indeed, it was this passive state that would become her pictorial signature. Marie-Thérèse’s face, her figure and her sleep itself prompted some of Picasso’s most lyrical and sensual works; as in Le Miroir (Zervos, vol. 7, no. 379; Private collection), in which she sleeps while sprawled voluptuously in front of a mirror, Le Rêve (Zervos, vol. 7, no. 364; Private collection), and the magnificent Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, in which she reclines beneath a marble bust of her profile.
Picasso’s frequent portrayals of Marie-Thérèse sleeping provided the ideal platform for his sensual, romantic visions of her, hinting at the languid eroticism of their lifestyle in his secluded château de Boisgeloup, while also tapping into her character. It is said that Marie- Thérèse loved to sleep, a quality that pleased Picasso; as he wrote in one of the freely associative prose poems he began to compose in 1935: ‘how much I love her now that she’s asleep’ (21 October 1935, Pablo Picasso: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & other poems, trans. J. Rothenberg, Cambridge, 2004, p. 36). In the present work, Picasso has reverted back to a motif he frequently used in the depiction of his sleeping lover, rendering her head as a crescent moon, luminous and radiant. ‘It achieved an ultimate simplicity and lyrical tenderness,’ as Gert Schiff has described Dormeuse (Picasso at Work at Home: Selections from the Marina Picasso Collection, exh. cat., Center for the Fine Arts, Miami, 1985, p. 83).
Beneath the painted image of Marie-Thérèse lies a sensuous, organic web of charcoal lines that create a plethora of patterns that appear as if a still life of flowers. In this way, this portrait of the artist’s lover literally blossoms in front of our eyes, with images subtly moving, emerging and disappearing. This palimpsest of lines and images appear as if they are the dreams Picasso’s beloved is seeing in her mind’s eye as she is lost in the reverie of slumber. Picasso had employed this method before in his depictions of Marie-Thérèse, the curves of her body and visage inspiring the artist to create multi-layered images constructed from myriad organic, undulating lines.
After the couple’s first fateful meeting, Marie-Thérèse was instantly captivated by the artist and agreed to Picasso’s suggestion to meet the following Monday at the Gare Saint-Lazare. “The name Picasso did not mean anything to me,” she later recalled. “It was his tie that interested me. And then he charmed me” (quoted in P. Cabanne, “Picasso et les joies de la paternité,” in L’Oeil, no. 226, May 1974, p. 7). Within just a few days’ time, she visited the artist at 23 rue la Boétie. “He took me to his studio,” she explained. “He looked at me, he seduced me. He kept looking at my face. When I left he said ‘Come back tomorrow.’ And then afterwards it was always tomorrow’” (quoted in D. Widmaier Picasso, “Marie-Thérèse Walter and Pablo Picasso: New Insights into a Secret Love,” in Pablo Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter: Between Classicism and Surrealism, exh. cat., Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso, Münster, 2004, p. 29).
Marie-Thérèse’s presence in Picasso’s life incited an unprecedented creative outpouring in his work; her youthful innocence and irrepressible vitality unleashing a near ecstatic rebirth in every area of Picasso’s artistic production. Never before had Picasso’s art radiated such palpable passion and heady eroticism, as the canvas became the site for rapturous expressions of love, devotion and wonder. As William Rubin has written, ‘…none of Picasso’s earlier relationships had provoked such sustained lyric power, such a sense of psychological awareness and erotic completeness… Picasso proceeds from his intense feeling… he paints the body contemplated, loved and self-contemplating. The vision of another’s body becomes an intensely rousing and mysterious process’ (Picasso in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1971, p. 138).
Françoise Gilot, the artist’s post-war lover, recalled, ‘[Marie-Thérèse] became the luminous dream of youth… She had no inconvenient reality; she was a reflection of the cosmos. If it was a beautiful day, the clear blue sky reminded him of her eyes. The flight of a bird symbolized for him the freedom of their relationship. And over a period of eight or nine years her image found its way into a great body of his work in painting, drawing, sculpture, and engraving. Hers was the privileged body on which the light fell to perfection’ (Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 235).
The year 1937 would prove a pivotal moment in the artist’s career. As Europe moved closer to all-out war, and Picasso’s native Spain was already in the throes of civil war, the artist was inexorably drawn into the turbulent political situation in which everyone found themselves at this time. Shortly after he painted Dormeuse, Picasso was approached by a delegate from the Spanish Republic asking him to paint a mural for the Spanish Republican Pavilion in the Exposition Universelle, due to open in May.
Picasso initially declined, however, following the shocking bombing of the Basque town of Guernica in April of this year, he was galvanized into painting the work that bares the town’s name, one of the most iconic works of art history (Guernica, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid). While the present work is far from the vision of horror and anguish that Picasso conveyed in Guernica, it shares the same monochrome palette. Indeed, the figure of Marie-Thérèse also inspired one of the central figures in Guernica, the woman clutching the lamp, appearing with the same radiant white visage as she does in Dormeuse.
Dormeuse remained in the artist’s possession for the rest of his life, a testament to the importance this anniversary painting clearly held for Picasso. After his death, it passed into the collection of his granddaughter, Marina. Marina Picasso was the daughter of Paulo, Picasso’s firstborn son with his wife, Olga Khokhlova. Her esteemed collection spans the legendary career of the artist, composed primarily of private works that the artist chose not to part with over the course of his life.
This now-legendary meeting marked the beginning of a love affair that would come to define Picasso’s life and art of the following years. Wearing her col Claudine, and pictured with her distinctive undulating, smooth profile, this portrait shows the long-lasting, deep romance of the couple, standing as a testament to the ongoing artistic inspiration the artist found in her presence and physiognomy. With her head resting on her hand, and her closed eyes rendered with a single curving line, in this work, Picasso has captured his lover unawares, relishing the purity and innocence of his model lost in the reverie of dream. This work remained in Picasso’s personal collection for the rest of his life.
One of Picasso’s favorite ways of depicting Marie-Thérèse was when she was in the throes of slumber. Indeed, it was this passive state that would become her pictorial signature. Marie-Thérèse’s face, her figure and her sleep itself prompted some of Picasso’s most lyrical and sensual works; as in Le Miroir (Zervos, vol. 7, no. 379; Private collection), in which she sleeps while sprawled voluptuously in front of a mirror, Le Rêve (Zervos, vol. 7, no. 364; Private collection), and the magnificent Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, in which she reclines beneath a marble bust of her profile.
Picasso’s frequent portrayals of Marie-Thérèse sleeping provided the ideal platform for his sensual, romantic visions of her, hinting at the languid eroticism of their lifestyle in his secluded château de Boisgeloup, while also tapping into her character. It is said that Marie- Thérèse loved to sleep, a quality that pleased Picasso; as he wrote in one of the freely associative prose poems he began to compose in 1935: ‘how much I love her now that she’s asleep’ (21 October 1935, Pablo Picasso: The Burial of the Count of Orgaz & other poems, trans. J. Rothenberg, Cambridge, 2004, p. 36). In the present work, Picasso has reverted back to a motif he frequently used in the depiction of his sleeping lover, rendering her head as a crescent moon, luminous and radiant. ‘It achieved an ultimate simplicity and lyrical tenderness,’ as Gert Schiff has described Dormeuse (Picasso at Work at Home: Selections from the Marina Picasso Collection, exh. cat., Center for the Fine Arts, Miami, 1985, p. 83).
Beneath the painted image of Marie-Thérèse lies a sensuous, organic web of charcoal lines that create a plethora of patterns that appear as if a still life of flowers. In this way, this portrait of the artist’s lover literally blossoms in front of our eyes, with images subtly moving, emerging and disappearing. This palimpsest of lines and images appear as if they are the dreams Picasso’s beloved is seeing in her mind’s eye as she is lost in the reverie of slumber. Picasso had employed this method before in his depictions of Marie-Thérèse, the curves of her body and visage inspiring the artist to create multi-layered images constructed from myriad organic, undulating lines.
After the couple’s first fateful meeting, Marie-Thérèse was instantly captivated by the artist and agreed to Picasso’s suggestion to meet the following Monday at the Gare Saint-Lazare. “The name Picasso did not mean anything to me,” she later recalled. “It was his tie that interested me. And then he charmed me” (quoted in P. Cabanne, “Picasso et les joies de la paternité,” in L’Oeil, no. 226, May 1974, p. 7). Within just a few days’ time, she visited the artist at 23 rue la Boétie. “He took me to his studio,” she explained. “He looked at me, he seduced me. He kept looking at my face. When I left he said ‘Come back tomorrow.’ And then afterwards it was always tomorrow’” (quoted in D. Widmaier Picasso, “Marie-Thérèse Walter and Pablo Picasso: New Insights into a Secret Love,” in Pablo Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter: Between Classicism and Surrealism, exh. cat., Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso, Münster, 2004, p. 29).
Marie-Thérèse’s presence in Picasso’s life incited an unprecedented creative outpouring in his work; her youthful innocence and irrepressible vitality unleashing a near ecstatic rebirth in every area of Picasso’s artistic production. Never before had Picasso’s art radiated such palpable passion and heady eroticism, as the canvas became the site for rapturous expressions of love, devotion and wonder. As William Rubin has written, ‘…none of Picasso’s earlier relationships had provoked such sustained lyric power, such a sense of psychological awareness and erotic completeness… Picasso proceeds from his intense feeling… he paints the body contemplated, loved and self-contemplating. The vision of another’s body becomes an intensely rousing and mysterious process’ (Picasso in the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1971, p. 138).
Françoise Gilot, the artist’s post-war lover, recalled, ‘[Marie-Thérèse] became the luminous dream of youth… She had no inconvenient reality; she was a reflection of the cosmos. If it was a beautiful day, the clear blue sky reminded him of her eyes. The flight of a bird symbolized for him the freedom of their relationship. And over a period of eight or nine years her image found its way into a great body of his work in painting, drawing, sculpture, and engraving. Hers was the privileged body on which the light fell to perfection’ (Life with Picasso, New York, 1964, p. 235).
The year 1937 would prove a pivotal moment in the artist’s career. As Europe moved closer to all-out war, and Picasso’s native Spain was already in the throes of civil war, the artist was inexorably drawn into the turbulent political situation in which everyone found themselves at this time. Shortly after he painted Dormeuse, Picasso was approached by a delegate from the Spanish Republic asking him to paint a mural for the Spanish Republican Pavilion in the Exposition Universelle, due to open in May.
Picasso initially declined, however, following the shocking bombing of the Basque town of Guernica in April of this year, he was galvanized into painting the work that bares the town’s name, one of the most iconic works of art history (Guernica, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid). While the present work is far from the vision of horror and anguish that Picasso conveyed in Guernica, it shares the same monochrome palette. Indeed, the figure of Marie-Thérèse also inspired one of the central figures in Guernica, the woman clutching the lamp, appearing with the same radiant white visage as she does in Dormeuse.
Dormeuse remained in the artist’s possession for the rest of his life, a testament to the importance this anniversary painting clearly held for Picasso. After his death, it passed into the collection of his granddaughter, Marina. Marina Picasso was the daughter of Paulo, Picasso’s firstborn son with his wife, Olga Khokhlova. Her esteemed collection spans the legendary career of the artist, composed primarily of private works that the artist chose not to part with over the course of his life.