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Lot Essay
In August 1959, Picasso commenced a cycle of pictures based on Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herb. When he brought this series to a conclusion in July 1962, he had painted 27 canvases and made approximately 140 drawings. Marie-Laure Bernadac has written:
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe gave Picasso the opportunity to work on an outdoor scene after having done so many interiors (the harem, the studio). It was also an indirect homage to Cézanne's Grandes Baigneuses and to the Joie de Vivre by Matisse. The picture also provided a chance to study the female nude. Picasso drew these figures in every possible posture, manipulating them as he saw fit. The full, schematic and "punched out forms" of Manet's characters were translated by Picasso into a kind of rounded tube. As he worked on the Déjeuner, Picasso managed to invent a new morphology. The central characters -- the seated nude female and the man conversing with her --are involved in a dialogue that subtly becomes that of the painter with his model.
(in he Ultimate Picasso, New York, 2000, p. 430)
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe gave Picasso the opportunity to work on an outdoor scene after having done so many interiors (the harem, the studio). It was also an indirect homage to Cézanne's Grandes Baigneuses and to the Joie de Vivre by Matisse. The picture also provided a chance to study the female nude. Picasso drew these figures in every possible posture, manipulating them as he saw fit. The full, schematic and "punched out forms" of Manet's characters were translated by Picasso into a kind of rounded tube. As he worked on the Déjeuner, Picasso managed to invent a new morphology. The central characters -- the seated nude female and the man conversing with her --are involved in a dialogue that subtly becomes that of the painter with his model.
(in he Ultimate Picasso, New York, 2000, p. 430)