Lot Essay
"'All his portraits of me are lies. They are all Picasso's, not one is Dora Maar.' 'But they live', countered Lord, 'all over the world, they hang in museums, thousands of art books are filled with them, and people say 'that's Dora Maar'. They recognise you and in a hundred years they will see you still. You will never be forgotten'. 'Do you think I care?' she exclaimed. 'Does Mme. Cézanne care? Does Saskia Rembrandt care? Remember that I, too, am familiar with the auspices of posterity. And over Picasso I have the advantage of faith. He doubts. That's why he can never stop.'" (James Lord, Picasso and Dora, a Memoir, London, 1993, p. 123).
Ever since they first met in 1936, Dora and Picasso had enjoyed a tempestuous relationship. She was much the most intelligent of all Picasso's mistresses and stimulated him aesthetically in a way that no other mistress ever managed. There were of course great tensions but when eventually he left her for Françoise Gilot in 1946, Dora suffered cruelly and had to be admitted for some time to a psychiatric hospital, so great was the extent of her breakdown. The tensions of this relationship, combined with the fact that they shared the difficult years of the war in German-occupied Paris together, perhaps explains why the innumerable very different portraits that Picasso painted of Dora remain among his finest achievements. James Lord was right: the walls of museums all over the world are adorned by the many faces of Dora Maar.
When they first met, Dora's hair was cropped like that of a boy but to please Picasso she agreed to let it grow and also to braid it, pulling it back to emphasise the pure oval of her face as we see in the present work. After the wild beauty of Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora represented a serene beauty combined with a capricious and eccentric character. Brigitte Léal writes, "The most provocative emblem of her somewhat over-flashy elegance is the little over-ornate hat that Picasso places on her head ... In its preciousness and fetishistic vocation the feminine hat was, like the glove, an erotic accessory prized by the Surrealists" (B. Léal, "For Charming Dora; Portraits of Dora Maar" in Picasso and Portraiture, London, 199?, p. 387-389).
Dora Maar was born in Tour in 1909, the daughter of a Yugoslavian architect; she moved to Argentina where she spent most of her youth before returning to France in the late 1920s. As a young photographer, she shared a studio with Brassai and lived with cinematographer Louis Chavance and Georges Batailles in the early 1930s. She was an intimate of the Surrealist movement and it was eventually through Paul Eluard that she first met Picasso in 1936. As well as being a photographer, she was also a painter and continued to work, without much encouragement from her lover, throughout their time together. After the arrival of Françoise Gilot and having recovered from a nervous breakdown, Dora tried to renew her life but increasingly drifted into a solitary existence comforted by a few old friends and by her catholic faith. She always thought of herself as something more than just the mistress of Picasso; observing on one occasion to James Lord, "my relations with the rest of the world for the rest of my life do not depend on the fact that I was once acquainted with Picasso" (op. cit., p. 111). Sadly it was not so easy to escape from the shadow of the great painter. She died in August 1997 at the age of 88.
The war years were difficult for both Picasso and Dora. Although they did not actually live together, the effects of the war-time curfew meant they frequently found themselves confined in each other's company. As Picasso admits, none of his paintings of this time were specifically conceived as war paintings, nevertheless their war-time atmosphere makes itself felt even at a subliminal level. This is sometimes clearest in the disquieting and emotional quality of the portraits of Dora Maar (see fig. 3), arising not only from the frequent violence and originality of the distortions to the image but also the contrast between the head which is always much more heavily worked than the body which is frequently rendered in a more accessible form. The nature of their confinement and Picasso's absolute fascination with eccentricities of Dora meant that in 1941 and 1942 the image of her became virtually the sole subject of his art. He made dozens of drawings and paintings of her in this period including thirty-two pictures of her, as in the present work seated in an armchair. Although, as stated above, Picasso frequently distorted the image of his sitters (see fig. 4), and Dora Maar in particular, the present work is in fact sublimely naturalistic in the features and gives a very good likeness of the sitter. As a later lover of Picasso, Françoise Gilot reported Dora Maar "had a beautiful oval face but a heavy jaw, which is a characteristic trait of almost all the portraits Picasso painted of her. Her hair was black and pulled back in a severe starkly dramatic coiffeur. I noticed her intense bronze green eyes and her slender hands with their long tapering fingers" (F. Gilot, Life with Picasso, London, 1964, p. 14). Other friends of the painter remembered "Her vigorously sculptured, expressive head with its characteristically asymmetric face, attracted him both as a painter and as a man" (W. Boeck and J. Sabartés, Picasso, London, 1961, p. 243.)
The present work is the culmination of a series of portraits painted in April 1942 (see Zervos, vol. 12, nos. 30ff). The armchair is not ubiquitous in this series although it had long served Picasso as a support in which to paint his mistresses from as early as Fernande Olivier and Eva Gouel at the beginning of the century. Humour, however, even in the darkest days of the war, is not absent. On 19 April he had painted Dora with a real fish, a fork and a lemon on her head and on 21 April he painted the present work, returning to the motif of the small hat so favoured by Dora and the Surrealists. Although Dora has been painted as if about to go out to pay a social visit, the confined nature of their existence in the Paris of the German occupation is emphasised by the barren, almost prison-like simplicity of the background.
Dora Maar, as quoted at the beginning, may well have resented the manner in which Picasso as a painter played with and distorted her image but Picasso meant no offence (see fig. 5). It was that he simply did not allow sentiment, tenderness or any convention to stand in his way. Such liberties may well be considered by some to be unpardonable indiscretions, an outrage against what might be considered sacred or beautiful, but for Picasso it was simple necessity. It was the process by which he made his art, even if it angered his sitters. The last world should perhaps remain with Dora, however. Catherine Dudley, an American lady, had been staying with Dora Maar in the south of France and remonstrated with her for being critical of Picasso. "'Nonsense', cried Dora angrily, 'I owe him nothing. In truth, it's the other way round. He used me for his art. He used me unmercifully. Just look at the so-called portraits of me he painted.'" (James Lord, op. cit., p. 179.)
Ever since they first met in 1936, Dora and Picasso had enjoyed a tempestuous relationship. She was much the most intelligent of all Picasso's mistresses and stimulated him aesthetically in a way that no other mistress ever managed. There were of course great tensions but when eventually he left her for Françoise Gilot in 1946, Dora suffered cruelly and had to be admitted for some time to a psychiatric hospital, so great was the extent of her breakdown. The tensions of this relationship, combined with the fact that they shared the difficult years of the war in German-occupied Paris together, perhaps explains why the innumerable very different portraits that Picasso painted of Dora remain among his finest achievements. James Lord was right: the walls of museums all over the world are adorned by the many faces of Dora Maar.
When they first met, Dora's hair was cropped like that of a boy but to please Picasso she agreed to let it grow and also to braid it, pulling it back to emphasise the pure oval of her face as we see in the present work. After the wild beauty of Marie-Thérèse Walter, Dora represented a serene beauty combined with a capricious and eccentric character. Brigitte Léal writes, "The most provocative emblem of her somewhat over-flashy elegance is the little over-ornate hat that Picasso places on her head ... In its preciousness and fetishistic vocation the feminine hat was, like the glove, an erotic accessory prized by the Surrealists" (B. Léal, "For Charming Dora; Portraits of Dora Maar" in Picasso and Portraiture, London, 199?, p. 387-389).
Dora Maar was born in Tour in 1909, the daughter of a Yugoslavian architect; she moved to Argentina where she spent most of her youth before returning to France in the late 1920s. As a young photographer, she shared a studio with Brassai and lived with cinematographer Louis Chavance and Georges Batailles in the early 1930s. She was an intimate of the Surrealist movement and it was eventually through Paul Eluard that she first met Picasso in 1936. As well as being a photographer, she was also a painter and continued to work, without much encouragement from her lover, throughout their time together. After the arrival of Françoise Gilot and having recovered from a nervous breakdown, Dora tried to renew her life but increasingly drifted into a solitary existence comforted by a few old friends and by her catholic faith. She always thought of herself as something more than just the mistress of Picasso; observing on one occasion to James Lord, "my relations with the rest of the world for the rest of my life do not depend on the fact that I was once acquainted with Picasso" (op. cit., p. 111). Sadly it was not so easy to escape from the shadow of the great painter. She died in August 1997 at the age of 88.
The war years were difficult for both Picasso and Dora. Although they did not actually live together, the effects of the war-time curfew meant they frequently found themselves confined in each other's company. As Picasso admits, none of his paintings of this time were specifically conceived as war paintings, nevertheless their war-time atmosphere makes itself felt even at a subliminal level. This is sometimes clearest in the disquieting and emotional quality of the portraits of Dora Maar (see fig. 3), arising not only from the frequent violence and originality of the distortions to the image but also the contrast between the head which is always much more heavily worked than the body which is frequently rendered in a more accessible form. The nature of their confinement and Picasso's absolute fascination with eccentricities of Dora meant that in 1941 and 1942 the image of her became virtually the sole subject of his art. He made dozens of drawings and paintings of her in this period including thirty-two pictures of her, as in the present work seated in an armchair. Although, as stated above, Picasso frequently distorted the image of his sitters (see fig. 4), and Dora Maar in particular, the present work is in fact sublimely naturalistic in the features and gives a very good likeness of the sitter. As a later lover of Picasso, Françoise Gilot reported Dora Maar "had a beautiful oval face but a heavy jaw, which is a characteristic trait of almost all the portraits Picasso painted of her. Her hair was black and pulled back in a severe starkly dramatic coiffeur. I noticed her intense bronze green eyes and her slender hands with their long tapering fingers" (F. Gilot, Life with Picasso, London, 1964, p. 14). Other friends of the painter remembered "Her vigorously sculptured, expressive head with its characteristically asymmetric face, attracted him both as a painter and as a man" (W. Boeck and J. Sabartés, Picasso, London, 1961, p. 243.)
The present work is the culmination of a series of portraits painted in April 1942 (see Zervos, vol. 12, nos. 30ff). The armchair is not ubiquitous in this series although it had long served Picasso as a support in which to paint his mistresses from as early as Fernande Olivier and Eva Gouel at the beginning of the century. Humour, however, even in the darkest days of the war, is not absent. On 19 April he had painted Dora with a real fish, a fork and a lemon on her head and on 21 April he painted the present work, returning to the motif of the small hat so favoured by Dora and the Surrealists. Although Dora has been painted as if about to go out to pay a social visit, the confined nature of their existence in the Paris of the German occupation is emphasised by the barren, almost prison-like simplicity of the background.
Dora Maar, as quoted at the beginning, may well have resented the manner in which Picasso as a painter played with and distorted her image but Picasso meant no offence (see fig. 5). It was that he simply did not allow sentiment, tenderness or any convention to stand in his way. Such liberties may well be considered by some to be unpardonable indiscretions, an outrage against what might be considered sacred or beautiful, but for Picasso it was simple necessity. It was the process by which he made his art, even if it angered his sitters. The last world should perhaps remain with Dora, however. Catherine Dudley, an American lady, had been staying with Dora Maar in the south of France and remonstrated with her for being critical of Picasso. "'Nonsense', cried Dora angrily, 'I owe him nothing. In truth, it's the other way round. He used me for his art. He used me unmercifully. Just look at the so-called portraits of me he painted.'" (James Lord, op. cit., p. 179.)