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Lot Essay
This work is sold with a photo-certificate from Maya Widmaier-Picasso dated Paris le 2 Avril 2005.
Picasso took his inspiration for this odalisque, as he often did from his early career onward, from Ingres' final masterwork Le bain turc (Wildenstein, no. 312). Picasso appears to have had in mind the reclining harem-girl seated in the background, foreshortened, with her buttocks slightly raised, to the left of the lute-player whose back is turned to the viewer. Picasso has suggested an Orientalist atmosphere in his drawing by depicting simple circular motifs on a decorative wall hanging seen in the left background. This prop is also, as Picasso would have described it, "un peu Matisse."
A three-armed woman is an oddity even among Picasso's most inventive anatomic distortions and irregularities, but this configuration was certainly no misstep in his drawing, for indeed he repeated the third arm in the drawing immediately following (24.10.70.IV Dimanche 25; lot 316). The precedent for this also comes from Ingres, who, in an oil study for Le bain turc known as La femme aux trois bras (W., no. 313), painted his model's right arm in both raised and lowered positions.
Picasso took his inspiration for this odalisque, as he often did from his early career onward, from Ingres' final masterwork Le bain turc (Wildenstein, no. 312). Picasso appears to have had in mind the reclining harem-girl seated in the background, foreshortened, with her buttocks slightly raised, to the left of the lute-player whose back is turned to the viewer. Picasso has suggested an Orientalist atmosphere in his drawing by depicting simple circular motifs on a decorative wall hanging seen in the left background. This prop is also, as Picasso would have described it, "un peu Matisse."
A three-armed woman is an oddity even among Picasso's most inventive anatomic distortions and irregularities, but this configuration was certainly no misstep in his drawing, for indeed he repeated the third arm in the drawing immediately following (24.10.70.IV Dimanche 25; lot 316). The precedent for this also comes from Ingres, who, in an oil study for Le bain turc known as La femme aux trois bras (W., no. 313), painted his model's right arm in both raised and lowered positions.