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Lot Essay
Le Peintre et son modèle dans un paysage belongs to a series of canvases portraying the artist and model, a theme favored by Picasso in the early 1960s. The first canvas, executed in February 1963, established the essential components of the series and numerous variations followed.
Picasso painted, drew and etched this subject so many times in his life that, as Michael Leiris has remarked, it almost became a genre in itself, like landscape or still-life. In 1963 and 1964 he painted almost nothing else: the painter, armed with his attributes, palette and brushes, the canvas on an easel, mostly seen from the side, like a screen, and the nude model, seated or reclining, in a space which presents all the characteristics of an artist's studio: the big window, the sculpture on a stool, the folding screen, the lamp, the divan, etc. All these stage props have nothing to do with Picasso's real situation; he always painted without a palette and without an easel, directly on to a canvas laid flat. This is therefore not so much a record of his own work as an 'epitome of a profession.' (M.L. Bernadac, Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 74)
The artist and his model is an inexhaustible theme which preoccupied Picasso periodically for many years. Some of his first examinations of this subject can be found in the sculptor's studio engravings of 1933 and then again in drawings of 1953 and 1954. Roland Penrose has noted:
It was a subject which allowed him to express with great freedom his perpetual interest in the multiple significance of the female nude, the fascination she exerts over her companion and her archetypal relationship to the landscape itself. It also carries with it for Picasso a suggestion of the snare into which this situation may lead the overzealous artist. He often presents the painter as a more or less ridiculous character absorbed in himself and his artistic hobby or even overcome by sleep rather than possessed by a passionate effort to interpret his enigmatic subject... In the 'sixties it was developed with even greater freedom, an enjoyment of the pastoral surroundings which the artist is seen to have chosen for this task and more boisterous and at times more scathing humor. (R. Penrose, Picasso, His Life and Work, Berkeley, 1981, p. 447)
Picasso painted, drew and etched this subject so many times in his life that, as Michael Leiris has remarked, it almost became a genre in itself, like landscape or still-life. In 1963 and 1964 he painted almost nothing else: the painter, armed with his attributes, palette and brushes, the canvas on an easel, mostly seen from the side, like a screen, and the nude model, seated or reclining, in a space which presents all the characteristics of an artist's studio: the big window, the sculpture on a stool, the folding screen, the lamp, the divan, etc. All these stage props have nothing to do with Picasso's real situation; he always painted without a palette and without an easel, directly on to a canvas laid flat. This is therefore not so much a record of his own work as an 'epitome of a profession.' (M.L. Bernadac, Late Picasso, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1988, p. 74)
The artist and his model is an inexhaustible theme which preoccupied Picasso periodically for many years. Some of his first examinations of this subject can be found in the sculptor's studio engravings of 1933 and then again in drawings of 1953 and 1954. Roland Penrose has noted:
It was a subject which allowed him to express with great freedom his perpetual interest in the multiple significance of the female nude, the fascination she exerts over her companion and her archetypal relationship to the landscape itself. It also carries with it for Picasso a suggestion of the snare into which this situation may lead the overzealous artist. He often presents the painter as a more or less ridiculous character absorbed in himself and his artistic hobby or even overcome by sleep rather than possessed by a passionate effort to interpret his enigmatic subject... In the 'sixties it was developed with even greater freedom, an enjoyment of the pastoral surroundings which the artist is seen to have chosen for this task and more boisterous and at times more scathing humor. (R. Penrose, Picasso, His Life and Work, Berkeley, 1981, p. 447)