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Lot Essay
In May 1912 Picasso broke up with Fernande Olivier, with whom he had been living since 1904, and left Paris in the company of his new love interest, Eva Gouel, with whom he had been having a clandestine affair since the previous summer. They arrived in Céret, where he had worked the year before. Picasso soon learned that Fernande was trying to find him, so in late June he hurried on to Perpignan and Avignon, and found a small house in the nearby town of Sorgues. He gave the address of his new hiding place at first only to Paris dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and then a little while later to his friend Braque, with whom he planned to work side by side, as they had previously done in Céret. Braque and his girlfriend Marcelle arrived in July, taking up residence in a house nearby.
Among the first pictures Picasso completed in Sorgues was the Arlesienne, a portrait of a woman dressed in local costume, seen in three-quarter view (Zervos, vol. II, no. 356). Around this time he was drawing extensively, filling the pages of a carnet now in the Musée Picasso (their cat. 16), and working on larger sheets. There are numerous sketches of mustachioed men, often wearing bowler hats. The present drawing is related to the pose in Arlesienne; there are three others that show a male subject seen frontally (Zervos, vol. II, nos. 326-328).
In contrast to the paintings that show the complexity and often limited legibility of Picasso's imagery during his recent 'hermetic' phase, these drawings possess a profoundly simple and almost classical beauty. They reveal the fundamental architecture of Picasso's cubist conceptions, without the distraction of excessive faceting, and allow a more directly communicative expression of the artist's humorous approach to his subjects. He would soon employ this type of drawing in his papiers collés and to execute studies for his paper constructions. John Richardson wrote that "in 1912 the increasingly complexity of cubism obliged him to paint with unaccustomed slowness. Only pen and pencil could keep pace with the outpourings of his imagination. Anyone who takes the trouble to track down the sequences of drawings in Zervos's chaotic catalog or more recently the published sketchbook pages will be amazed at profusion, the sustained inventiveness. What draftsman since Leonardo has brought off such a feat? (in A Life of Picasso, 1907-1917, New York, 1996, p. 248).
Among the first pictures Picasso completed in Sorgues was the Arlesienne, a portrait of a woman dressed in local costume, seen in three-quarter view (Zervos, vol. II, no. 356). Around this time he was drawing extensively, filling the pages of a carnet now in the Musée Picasso (their cat. 16), and working on larger sheets. There are numerous sketches of mustachioed men, often wearing bowler hats. The present drawing is related to the pose in Arlesienne; there are three others that show a male subject seen frontally (Zervos, vol. II, nos. 326-328).
In contrast to the paintings that show the complexity and often limited legibility of Picasso's imagery during his recent 'hermetic' phase, these drawings possess a profoundly simple and almost classical beauty. They reveal the fundamental architecture of Picasso's cubist conceptions, without the distraction of excessive faceting, and allow a more directly communicative expression of the artist's humorous approach to his subjects. He would soon employ this type of drawing in his papiers collés and to execute studies for his paper constructions. John Richardson wrote that "in 1912 the increasingly complexity of cubism obliged him to paint with unaccustomed slowness. Only pen and pencil could keep pace with the outpourings of his imagination. Anyone who takes the trouble to track down the sequences of drawings in Zervos's chaotic catalog or more recently the published sketchbook pages will be amazed at profusion, the sustained inventiveness. What draftsman since Leonardo has brought off such a feat? (in A Life of Picasso, 1907-1917, New York, 1996, p. 248).