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Lot Essay
The present work belongs to a series of drawings of similar subjects executed by Picasso in 1967, at the time when he was living with Jacqueline Roque at Mougins, shortly after the one million visitor exhibition - held in 1966 at the Petit Palais and Grand Palais in Paris - that definitively confirmed Picasso as one of the greatest masters of the century. In this phase of his prodigious career, Picasso was still measuring himself against the artistic tradition of the past. The watermelon eater, a young boy crowned by leaves and flowers like a Caravaggio's Bacchus, is a subject that often appears in his oeuvre. It has been linked to Picasso's memories of the Spanish Baroque tradition, and, consequently, with the rediscovered hispanidad that played such a key role in his late works. This composition, though, also displays close parallels with paintings of the Le Nain brothers (1600-1648 and 1610-1648), one of which Picasso owned in his personal collection, Le repos du cavalier (now in the Louvre, Paris). The Le Nain brothers often depicted pooor farmers or peasant families in the fields or in countryside settings; their figures, surrounded by peaceful domestic animals, are often caught eating, or playing the flute, like the figures in the present work. Again, though, Picasso mixes and elaborates his sources: another pivotal reference in the present work is to the slice of watermelon in the Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907, Museum of Modern Art, New York) - an element that one can find frequently in the artist's work, charged with symbolic meanings linked to the Mediterranean tradition; summer; heat; the sensual eating of the fruit.
As is typical of Picasso's late compositions, the watermelon eater, the flute player and the bearded man are assembled with a clear disregard for prettiness, grace and correctness of perspective. This contempt for academic rules proves to be one of the most fruitful and significant element of Picasso's lesson for the generations of painters that followed him. Picasso's art never evolved towards mannerism, but always constituted a primary source of ideas and inspiration.
As is typical of Picasso's late compositions, the watermelon eater, the flute player and the bearded man are assembled with a clear disregard for prettiness, grace and correctness of perspective. This contempt for academic rules proves to be one of the most fruitful and significant element of Picasso's lesson for the generations of painters that followed him. Picasso's art never evolved towards mannerism, but always constituted a primary source of ideas and inspiration.