Lot Essay
Iris Jaunes featured in Picasso's very first exhibition in Paris, held with the Basque painter Francisco de Iturrino at Ambroise Vollard's gallery in rue Laffitte in June 1901. The young Spaniard had arrived barely a month before the exhibition opening on the 24th June and found lodgings with his dealer Père Manach at 130 Boulevard de Clichy. An extant photograph shows Picasso, Père Manach and Torres Fuster in his studio on Boulevard de Clichy with a flower-piece contemporary to the present painting hanging on the wall behind them (fig. 1).
Vollard was fast establishing a reputation as the most enterprising dealer in Paris, and engaged the art critic Gustave Coqiot to promote the exhibition - in return for a portrait by Picasso. In addition to his elegant preface, published in Le Journal, 17th June 1901, the exhibition was praised by Félicien Fagus in the Revue Blanche, and by Père Coll in La Veu de Catalunya. The exhibition also included the self-portrait Yo Picasso, Blue Roofs, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and La Madrilène, now in the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo. Amongst the buyers were Madame Besnard, the wife of Picasso's colour merchant; Maurice Fabre, a Vollard client who already owned several fine Gauguins, including the Pastorale Taihitienne now in the Tate Gallery, and Emmanuel Virenque the Spanish consul, who bought Le Divan Japonais.
One of the most lasting consequences of the exhibition was Picasso's friendship with Max Jacob. Jacob described their meeting "at the time of his great and first exhibition, I, as a professional art critic, had been so struck with wonder at Picasso's production that I left a word of admiration with Ambroise Vollard. And the same day I received from M. Manach, who looked after Picasso's interests, an invitation to visit him. Already, this first day, we felt a great sympathy for each other" (see J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. I, 1881-1906, London, 1991, p. 204).
Vollard was fast establishing a reputation as the most enterprising dealer in Paris, and engaged the art critic Gustave Coqiot to promote the exhibition - in return for a portrait by Picasso. In addition to his elegant preface, published in Le Journal, 17th June 1901, the exhibition was praised by Félicien Fagus in the Revue Blanche, and by Père Coll in La Veu de Catalunya. The exhibition also included the self-portrait Yo Picasso, Blue Roofs, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and La Madrilène, now in the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, Otterlo. Amongst the buyers were Madame Besnard, the wife of Picasso's colour merchant; Maurice Fabre, a Vollard client who already owned several fine Gauguins, including the Pastorale Taihitienne now in the Tate Gallery, and Emmanuel Virenque the Spanish consul, who bought Le Divan Japonais.
One of the most lasting consequences of the exhibition was Picasso's friendship with Max Jacob. Jacob described their meeting "at the time of his great and first exhibition, I, as a professional art critic, had been so struck with wonder at Picasso's production that I left a word of admiration with Ambroise Vollard. And the same day I received from M. Manach, who looked after Picasso's interests, an invitation to visit him. Already, this first day, we felt a great sympathy for each other" (see J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso, vol. I, 1881-1906, London, 1991, p. 204).