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拍品专文
Pablo Picasso, Le vieux juif, 1903, Collection Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
Picasso's third visit to Paris in late 1902 marked the nadir of the artist's fortunes (see note to lot 445). He had never experienced such abject poverty, and after the success of his one-man exhibition at Vollard's gallery in 1901 during his second Paris stay, his failure to interest dealers in his work and make decent sales was especially discouraging.
"But no amount of recognition, no amount of gold, would ever heal the wounds that Picasso suffered during these hellishly humiliating three months. Henceforth his deprivations and degradations would entitle him to take an even blacker view of life than before" (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso: Volume I 1881-1906, New York, 1991, p. 267).
Picasso returned to Barcelona in mid-January 1903; he would remain there for the next fifteen months, his final stay in his homeland before returning to Paris for good. At first he moved into a studio apartment on the Riera Sant Joan with his friend Angel de Soto. Picasso had once shared the place with Carles Casagemas, who in 1901 killed himself over a girl in Paris; his ghostly presence pushed Picasso further into introspection and sadness. Picasso took an old large canvas that had been stored there, scraped it down and commenced work on La Vie (Zervos, vol. 1, no. 179; see note to lot 402), the masterwork of what would later be called the artist's Blue period. Picasso had initially painted himself as the male figure in the composition, but then substituted the likeness of the dead Casagemas. "Picasso set about perfecting the synthesis toward which he had been working ever since the Vollard show eighteen months earlier. Catalan primitives, El Greco, Morales, Poussin, Puvis de Chavannes, Carrihre, above all Gauguin, are only some of the sources that he could transform " (ibid., p. 269).
Picasso followed La Vie during the fall and winter of 1903 with a series of smaller paintings that deal with isolation, poverty, old age, and blindness, themes that unite in the present work, a study for Le vieux juif (see fig.). A blind, white-bearded old man sits with his arm around a young boy who serves as his guide. In the final painting the old man holds his arm at his side, and the boy looks ahead vacantly, while chewing wearily on a piece of fruit, giving the impression that their relationship is founded more on mutual necessity than on any deep emotional attachment.
Blindness figures in other monochrome blue paintings done during these months: Le repas de l'aveugle, L'aveugle, the universally famous Le vieux guitariste, (Zervos, vol. 1, nos. 168, 172 and 202, respectively), and a sculpted mask, Chanteur aveugle (Spies, no. 2). The clue to Picasso's preoccupation with this infirmity is the address on the reverse of the canvas of Le vieux juif: no. 3, Carrer de le Merci, his parent's home. Picasso's father was slowly loosing his eyesight, which threatened his job as a teacher of painting in the local academy. Picasso was forced to confront the sad irony of his father's condition, and it resurrected a serious Oedipal issue as well, dating back to his 'teens, when his own burgeoning, prodigious skills as an artist outstripped his father's modest talents. The threat of blindness, even if entirely unfounded in physical terms, became a recurring nightmare for the artist, seen again in the blind minotaurs of the early 1930s. "The allegory of the blinded man has pursued Picasso throughout his life like a shadow as though reproaching him for his unique gift of vision " (R. Penrose, Picasso: His Life and Work, London, 1958, p. 89).
Picasso's friend the painter Sébastien Junyent (see lot 402) purchased the painting Le vieux juif from the artist, some say for only 500 pesetas, or the artist may have given it to him as collateral for a loan. Junyent sent it to Paris for an exhibition where it was resold, ending up in Sergei Shchukin's collection in Moscow. Sebastien Junyer Vidal, another Barcelona artist and later a journalist, added the present study to his sizable collection of early Picassos, and was probably responsible for apocryphal signature which the drawing once bore, before it was removed and signed by Picasso.
Picasso's third visit to Paris in late 1902 marked the nadir of the artist's fortunes (see note to lot 445). He had never experienced such abject poverty, and after the success of his one-man exhibition at Vollard's gallery in 1901 during his second Paris stay, his failure to interest dealers in his work and make decent sales was especially discouraging.
"But no amount of recognition, no amount of gold, would ever heal the wounds that Picasso suffered during these hellishly humiliating three months. Henceforth his deprivations and degradations would entitle him to take an even blacker view of life than before" (J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso: Volume I 1881-1906, New York, 1991, p. 267).
Picasso returned to Barcelona in mid-January 1903; he would remain there for the next fifteen months, his final stay in his homeland before returning to Paris for good. At first he moved into a studio apartment on the Riera Sant Joan with his friend Angel de Soto. Picasso had once shared the place with Carles Casagemas, who in 1901 killed himself over a girl in Paris; his ghostly presence pushed Picasso further into introspection and sadness. Picasso took an old large canvas that had been stored there, scraped it down and commenced work on La Vie (Zervos, vol. 1, no. 179; see note to lot 402), the masterwork of what would later be called the artist's Blue period. Picasso had initially painted himself as the male figure in the composition, but then substituted the likeness of the dead Casagemas. "Picasso set about perfecting the synthesis toward which he had been working ever since the Vollard show eighteen months earlier. Catalan primitives, El Greco, Morales, Poussin, Puvis de Chavannes, Carrihre, above all Gauguin, are only some of the sources that he could transform " (ibid., p. 269).
Picasso followed La Vie during the fall and winter of 1903 with a series of smaller paintings that deal with isolation, poverty, old age, and blindness, themes that unite in the present work, a study for Le vieux juif (see fig.). A blind, white-bearded old man sits with his arm around a young boy who serves as his guide. In the final painting the old man holds his arm at his side, and the boy looks ahead vacantly, while chewing wearily on a piece of fruit, giving the impression that their relationship is founded more on mutual necessity than on any deep emotional attachment.
Blindness figures in other monochrome blue paintings done during these months: Le repas de l'aveugle, L'aveugle, the universally famous Le vieux guitariste, (Zervos, vol. 1, nos. 168, 172 and 202, respectively), and a sculpted mask, Chanteur aveugle (Spies, no. 2). The clue to Picasso's preoccupation with this infirmity is the address on the reverse of the canvas of Le vieux juif: no. 3, Carrer de le Merci, his parent's home. Picasso's father was slowly loosing his eyesight, which threatened his job as a teacher of painting in the local academy. Picasso was forced to confront the sad irony of his father's condition, and it resurrected a serious Oedipal issue as well, dating back to his 'teens, when his own burgeoning, prodigious skills as an artist outstripped his father's modest talents. The threat of blindness, even if entirely unfounded in physical terms, became a recurring nightmare for the artist, seen again in the blind minotaurs of the early 1930s. "The allegory of the blinded man has pursued Picasso throughout his life like a shadow as though reproaching him for his unique gift of vision " (R. Penrose, Picasso: His Life and Work, London, 1958, p. 89).
Picasso's friend the painter Sébastien Junyent (see lot 402) purchased the painting Le vieux juif from the artist, some say for only 500 pesetas, or the artist may have given it to him as collateral for a loan. Junyent sent it to Paris for an exhibition where it was resold, ending up in Sergei Shchukin's collection in Moscow. Sebastien Junyer Vidal, another Barcelona artist and later a journalist, added the present study to his sizable collection of early Picassos, and was probably responsible for apocryphal signature which the drawing once bore, before it was removed and signed by Picasso.