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Lot Essay
Picasso's wife Jacqueline was the artist's chief model in his last years. She did not actually need to pose; her mere presence was sufficient to trigger Picasso's hotwired imagination, so that she might appear as 'woman' in a countless variety of guises and settings, usually in an erotic context. The male figures in Picasso's late work have more varied sources. They are often some representation of the artist himself, transformed into men who may be far younger or even older and more wizened, as they play out their roles in his theatre of memory. Of they may be figures out of old paintings or novels, like the mousequetaires, or dead artists brought back to life, like Rembrandt or Degas. Prior to 1965, the young men and boys who feature in Picasso's paintings and drawings might easily recall faces or types that Picasso and Jacqueline encountered in day trips away from their home in Mougins. After November 1965, however, following major surgery, Picasso grew increasingly reclusive, relying ever more on memory and imagination to supply the many personages who populate his pictures.
One of the few men, apart from visitors, that Picasso regularly saw in his final years was his chauffeur Maurice Bresnu, who joined the Picasso household with his wife, also named Jacqueline, in early 1965. He served Picasso to the end of the artist's life and assisted his widow Jacqueline thereafter. Nicknamed "Nounours" ("Teddy-Bear"), Bresnu was an imposing, burly man. John Richardson has written, "Henceforth Bresnu-like men with curly beards and blobs of dark hair would appear ever more frequently in the artist's imagery" (in "The Bresnu Collection," catalogue introduction, sale Christie's, New York, 19 November 1998, p. 6). Contrasted with earlier portrayals of bearded men, which are often more abstractly rendered in the manner seen on the artist's ceramics, this Buste d'homme barbu is strongly characterized, giving the impression of a real individual instead of a stylized type. It may well be Picasso's first portrayal of Bresnu, with many more to follow, as the artist's driver entered the fabric of Picasso's daily life, and began to take on a correspondingly significant role in his imaginary scenarios. Richardson, in discussing drawings from a 1971 sketchbook, points out that "The fact that the love-makers in one sequence look remarkably like Bresnu and Jacqueline does not imply an affair between his wife and his driver. Picasso seems to have assumed the identity of the younger, more potent Bresnu much as he assumed the identity and appropriated the powers of Rembrandt" (ibid., p. 7).
If the present Buste d'homme barbu is indeed a specific portrait, it nonetheless resonates on a more universal level. The bearded man here represents the embodiment of an ancient Mediterranean stock. He could be a modern fisherman (a favorite subject of the artist, who liked to depict himself wearing a striped fisherman's jersey), or an image of Homer's Odysseus. His visage might easily be found on a Roman wall painting or among the extraordinary Fayum funerary portraits from the second century excavated in Egypt. He appears vigorous, alert, perhaps even wily, and surely possessed of great physical strength. This was his chief appeal to Picasso, for he reflects the artist's own once-vaunted machismo, and, as such, he became one more surrogate for the artist, and assumed an important place in his late paintings and drawings.
The present painting was formerly in the collection of Edgar Kaufman, Jr., one of the leading scholars on the work of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1935 Kaufman urged his father, a Pittsburgh department store magnate, to commission Wright to build a house over the waterfall in Bear Run, Pennsylvania. The construction of this celebrated building, called Fallingwater, marked the beginning of the great final phase of Wright's career. Kaufman later became director of industrial design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He acquired works by many modern artists represented in the museum collection, including Calder, Giacometti, Klee, Miró, Mondrian, and Picasso.
One of the few men, apart from visitors, that Picasso regularly saw in his final years was his chauffeur Maurice Bresnu, who joined the Picasso household with his wife, also named Jacqueline, in early 1965. He served Picasso to the end of the artist's life and assisted his widow Jacqueline thereafter. Nicknamed "Nounours" ("Teddy-Bear"), Bresnu was an imposing, burly man. John Richardson has written, "Henceforth Bresnu-like men with curly beards and blobs of dark hair would appear ever more frequently in the artist's imagery" (in "The Bresnu Collection," catalogue introduction, sale Christie's, New York, 19 November 1998, p. 6). Contrasted with earlier portrayals of bearded men, which are often more abstractly rendered in the manner seen on the artist's ceramics, this Buste d'homme barbu is strongly characterized, giving the impression of a real individual instead of a stylized type. It may well be Picasso's first portrayal of Bresnu, with many more to follow, as the artist's driver entered the fabric of Picasso's daily life, and began to take on a correspondingly significant role in his imaginary scenarios. Richardson, in discussing drawings from a 1971 sketchbook, points out that "The fact that the love-makers in one sequence look remarkably like Bresnu and Jacqueline does not imply an affair between his wife and his driver. Picasso seems to have assumed the identity of the younger, more potent Bresnu much as he assumed the identity and appropriated the powers of Rembrandt" (ibid., p. 7).
If the present Buste d'homme barbu is indeed a specific portrait, it nonetheless resonates on a more universal level. The bearded man here represents the embodiment of an ancient Mediterranean stock. He could be a modern fisherman (a favorite subject of the artist, who liked to depict himself wearing a striped fisherman's jersey), or an image of Homer's Odysseus. His visage might easily be found on a Roman wall painting or among the extraordinary Fayum funerary portraits from the second century excavated in Egypt. He appears vigorous, alert, perhaps even wily, and surely possessed of great physical strength. This was his chief appeal to Picasso, for he reflects the artist's own once-vaunted machismo, and, as such, he became one more surrogate for the artist, and assumed an important place in his late paintings and drawings.
The present painting was formerly in the collection of Edgar Kaufman, Jr., one of the leading scholars on the work of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1935 Kaufman urged his father, a Pittsburgh department store magnate, to commission Wright to build a house over the waterfall in Bear Run, Pennsylvania. The construction of this celebrated building, called Fallingwater, marked the beginning of the great final phase of Wright's career. Kaufman later became director of industrial design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He acquired works by many modern artists represented in the museum collection, including Calder, Giacometti, Klee, Miró, Mondrian, and Picasso.