Lot Essay
In 1949 Picasso returned to live in Vallauris with his mistress Françoise Gilot and their newly born son, Claude. They moved into a small villa called 'La Galloise' and Picasso rented an old ceramic warehouse which was divided into two studios, one for painting and the other for sculpture.
By 1953 Picasso's relationship with Françoise was beginning to fragment. The previous year the artist had met Jacqueline Rocque who was to become his next mistress and ultimately his wife and Françoise was already beginning to plan her life without Picasso. In March of 1953, when the present work was painted, Françoise had gone to Paris with her two children, Claude and Paloma, leaving Picasso on his own in Vallauris. Given the emotional turmoil of his life at this time, Le Bouquet is a remarkably calm yet forceful painting. Picasso has chosen to paint the almost ubiquitous sunflowers, which grow all over Provence, in a curiously contrasted manner. The flowers themselves are handled in a relatively straightforward manner with a high key palette reminiscent of the bright colours he was later to use in the Femme d'Alger series, in particular the riotously colourful 'Version O' (Zervos, vol. 16, no. 360). The pot is, however, treated in a more self-consciously cubist manner and not the synthetic cubism of the late 1910s or early 1920s but rather a re-working of the more dionysiac cubism of the earliest period circa 1908-11. The same treatment can be seen in Nu accroupi (fig. 3), also of 1953.
Flower still-lifes never occupied Picasso in the way he concentrated on the human figure but nevertheless in 1953 there are several comparable works. He eventually had cast in bronze (fig. 4) the sculpture of sunflowers that he had worked in 1951 and interiors with flowers were a constant theme at this time, for example Intérieur au pot de fleurs (Zervos, vol. 16, no. 72) where he has successfully blended the shapes of the flower into the arabesques of the wallpaper in an almost subconscious homage to his great friend Matisse who was to die early the following year.
By 1953 Picasso's relationship with Françoise was beginning to fragment. The previous year the artist had met Jacqueline Rocque who was to become his next mistress and ultimately his wife and Françoise was already beginning to plan her life without Picasso. In March of 1953, when the present work was painted, Françoise had gone to Paris with her two children, Claude and Paloma, leaving Picasso on his own in Vallauris. Given the emotional turmoil of his life at this time, Le Bouquet is a remarkably calm yet forceful painting. Picasso has chosen to paint the almost ubiquitous sunflowers, which grow all over Provence, in a curiously contrasted manner. The flowers themselves are handled in a relatively straightforward manner with a high key palette reminiscent of the bright colours he was later to use in the Femme d'Alger series, in particular the riotously colourful 'Version O' (Zervos, vol. 16, no. 360). The pot is, however, treated in a more self-consciously cubist manner and not the synthetic cubism of the late 1910s or early 1920s but rather a re-working of the more dionysiac cubism of the earliest period circa 1908-11. The same treatment can be seen in Nu accroupi (fig. 3), also of 1953.
Flower still-lifes never occupied Picasso in the way he concentrated on the human figure but nevertheless in 1953 there are several comparable works. He eventually had cast in bronze (fig. 4) the sculpture of sunflowers that he had worked in 1951 and interiors with flowers were a constant theme at this time, for example Intérieur au pot de fleurs (Zervos, vol. 16, no. 72) where he has successfully blended the shapes of the flower into the arabesques of the wallpaper in an almost subconscious homage to his great friend Matisse who was to die early the following year.