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Lot Essay
In May 1901, the nineteen-year-old Pablo Picasso left Barcelona on his second visit to Paris to pursue his artistic future in the French capital. He arrived in Paris full of confidence and eager to set to work in preparation for his first one-man exhibition which, through the help of his friend and dealer Père Mañach, was to take place in Ambroise Vollard's prestigious gallery on the rue Lafitte.
Picasso arrivant à Paris avec Jaume Andreu Bonsons is one of the very first works that the artist executed at this crucial junction, capturing this momentous occasion of his arrival in glittering fin-de-siècle Paris. Here, he depicts himself on the quay of the Seine in the company of Jaume Andreu Bonsons, who had travelled with him from Barcelona. As described by his biographer, John Richardson: “For the second trip to Paris, none of Picasso’s closest friends was free to accompany him: Casagemas was dead, Pallarès back in Horta, and Sabartès not yet ready to leave Barcelona. And as he disliked travelling alone, he had to look around for a new companion, preferably one with means. In Jaume Andreu Bonsons—a friend of Casagemas’ and an habitué of Els Quatre Gats—he found someone more or less suitable. Prosperous parents were paying for young Andreu to go to Paris and study art” (op. cit., p. 193).
A bridge crowded with traffic, the Eiffel Tower and a passing elegant Parisienne form the background of Picasso arrivant à Paris avec Jaume Andreu Bonsons. The bearded, pipe-smoking Bonsons sports a fashionable check cap and Gladstone portmanteau, while Picasso himself takes center stage, holding a walking stick and large portfolio tucked tightly under his arm. Both men are heavily clothed in overcoats—in fact nothing but Picasso’s characteristic dark eyes and shaggy hair can be seen beneath the brim of his black turkey-breeder’s hat—imparting the scene with the fresh chill of residual spring.
During Picasso’s first stay in Paris he signed a two-year contract with Mañach providing him 150 francs per month in exchange for a proportion of his works. The portfolio he holds in the present work contained these very drawings. Mañach, delighted to see his newly discovered protégé, welcomed him and offered to share with him his minute apartment at 130ter boulevard de Clichy, where Picasso would reside in the larger of the two rooms for the next few months.
Picasso began immediate preparation for the exhibition of his work, which included sixty-four paintings and drawings, so many of them showing scenes of urban leisure that the artist was characterized in the catalogue preface as an "impetuous lover of contemporary life" (G. Coquiot, quoted in ed. M. McCully, Picasso: The Early Years, 1892-1906, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1997, p. 144). The works were well-received by critics, collectors, and gallery-goers alike, with one review imparting the general assessment of the young painter's exceptional abilities, praising, in particular, his already impressive achievements in painting: “[Picasso] is the painter, utterly and beautifully the painter; he has the power of divining the essence of things… Like all pure painters he adores color for its own sake… he is enamored of all subjects, every subject is his… It is evident that his passionate surge forward has not left him the leisure to forge for himself a personal style; his personality exists in this passion, this juvenile impetuous spontaneity (they say that he is not yet twenty and covers as many as three canvases a day…)” (F. Fagus quoted in ibid., p. 35).
The Vollard show was the first major exhibition of Picasso's work outside of his native Spain and marked a watershed moment in the young artist’s career, garnering him widespread recognition and acclaim. Executed in 1901, at the opening of the 20th century, the present drawing anticipates in a self-prophesizing, apotheotic manner the sheer magnitude of the occasion that was Picasso’s second arrival in France—his adopted madre patria for the remainder of his life—an occasion that would go on to redefine the very course of art as it had and would come to exist.
Picasso arrivant à Paris avec Jaume Andreu Bonsons is one of the very first works that the artist executed at this crucial junction, capturing this momentous occasion of his arrival in glittering fin-de-siècle Paris. Here, he depicts himself on the quay of the Seine in the company of Jaume Andreu Bonsons, who had travelled with him from Barcelona. As described by his biographer, John Richardson: “For the second trip to Paris, none of Picasso’s closest friends was free to accompany him: Casagemas was dead, Pallarès back in Horta, and Sabartès not yet ready to leave Barcelona. And as he disliked travelling alone, he had to look around for a new companion, preferably one with means. In Jaume Andreu Bonsons—a friend of Casagemas’ and an habitué of Els Quatre Gats—he found someone more or less suitable. Prosperous parents were paying for young Andreu to go to Paris and study art” (op. cit., p. 193).
A bridge crowded with traffic, the Eiffel Tower and a passing elegant Parisienne form the background of Picasso arrivant à Paris avec Jaume Andreu Bonsons. The bearded, pipe-smoking Bonsons sports a fashionable check cap and Gladstone portmanteau, while Picasso himself takes center stage, holding a walking stick and large portfolio tucked tightly under his arm. Both men are heavily clothed in overcoats—in fact nothing but Picasso’s characteristic dark eyes and shaggy hair can be seen beneath the brim of his black turkey-breeder’s hat—imparting the scene with the fresh chill of residual spring.
During Picasso’s first stay in Paris he signed a two-year contract with Mañach providing him 150 francs per month in exchange for a proportion of his works. The portfolio he holds in the present work contained these very drawings. Mañach, delighted to see his newly discovered protégé, welcomed him and offered to share with him his minute apartment at 130ter boulevard de Clichy, where Picasso would reside in the larger of the two rooms for the next few months.
Picasso began immediate preparation for the exhibition of his work, which included sixty-four paintings and drawings, so many of them showing scenes of urban leisure that the artist was characterized in the catalogue preface as an "impetuous lover of contemporary life" (G. Coquiot, quoted in ed. M. McCully, Picasso: The Early Years, 1892-1906, exh. cat., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1997, p. 144). The works were well-received by critics, collectors, and gallery-goers alike, with one review imparting the general assessment of the young painter's exceptional abilities, praising, in particular, his already impressive achievements in painting: “[Picasso] is the painter, utterly and beautifully the painter; he has the power of divining the essence of things… Like all pure painters he adores color for its own sake… he is enamored of all subjects, every subject is his… It is evident that his passionate surge forward has not left him the leisure to forge for himself a personal style; his personality exists in this passion, this juvenile impetuous spontaneity (they say that he is not yet twenty and covers as many as three canvases a day…)” (F. Fagus quoted in ibid., p. 35).
The Vollard show was the first major exhibition of Picasso's work outside of his native Spain and marked a watershed moment in the young artist’s career, garnering him widespread recognition and acclaim. Executed in 1901, at the opening of the 20th century, the present drawing anticipates in a self-prophesizing, apotheotic manner the sheer magnitude of the occasion that was Picasso’s second arrival in France—his adopted madre patria for the remainder of his life—an occasion that would go on to redefine the very course of art as it had and would come to exist.