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Lot Essay
At the close of 1966, Pablo Picasso began to concentrate on the subject that would come to dominate his late career, that of the swashbuckling musketeer. Looking to history, fiction, and chivalric traditions, Picasso created a merry band of debonaire swordsmen, at once jocular and suave. Executed on 28 January 1969, Buste d'homme à la pipe is a witty, spirited example from this series. Like many of the other musketeers, Picasso has seated his favoured character in an upright chair. Dressed in elaborate ruffles, he holds, in his left hand, the titular pipe. A sceptical, inquisitive expression graces his face as he stares boldly out at the viewer – and the world.
Although Picasso had previously looked to history for inspiration, it wasn’t until 1966 that he turned his attention toward the figure of the musketeer. During a period of convalescence, he read classic works of literature including plays by Shakespeare and novels by Dickens, Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas. It was Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, which told the story of the rollicking adventures of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and their friend D'Artagnan, that so captivated Picasso. In the present work, the protagonist clutches a rectangular object to his chest, perhaps a book in a nod to this literary influence. The first oil painting of the series was completed in February 1967, with numerous canvases and works on paper following in its wake. Across these, the musketeers flirt and cavort; they are wry, dashing, impish, droll. Picasso felt such affection for his musketeers that he gave them attributes and personalities, and the writer Hélène Parmelin recalled how he would joke around with his paintings, pointing to one figure or another and saying, ‘With this one you’d better watch out. That one makes fun of us. That one is enormously satisfied. This one is a grave intellectual. And that one look how sad he is, the poor guy. He must be a painter’ (quoted in Picasso: Tradition and Avant Garde, exh. cat., Museo del Prado, Madrid, 2006, p. 340).
Picasso’s fascination with the musketeer appears to have been the logical next step in his ongoing dialogue with the art of the past. He had, during these years, begun to re-examine the painters he would have studied as a young artist, first at Madrid’s Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, and later at Barcelona’s School of Fine Arts. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Picasso took on the masterpieces of his predecessors, reinterpreting and reimagining iconic works such as Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas and Eugène Delacroix’s Les femmes d’Alger. As John Richardson aptly put it, ‘You identified with someone; you cannibalized them; you assumed their powers. How accurately this described what Picasso was up to in his last years’ (‘The Catch in the Late Picasso,’ The New York Review of Books, 19 July 1984, n.p.).
It was Rembrandt, however, whose influence can be most felt in the musketeers, and over the course of the 1960s, Picasso increasingly identified with the Dutch Golden Age painter. Both liked to wink at their audiences by inserting themselves into their paintings, and both had experienced great and lasting success. Picasso admired Rembrandt’s works on paper and frequently referenced Otto Benesch’s six-volume catalogue of Rembrandt’s drawings. Jacqueline Roque confirmed that it was Rembrandt who inspired the musketeer series, telling André Malraux that they ‘happened when Picasso started to study Rembrandt’ (quoted in M.-L. Bernadac, ‘Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model’, in Late Picasso, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1988, p. 81).
By riffing on different artistic genres and images, Picasso announced his own position within the canon of art history. The musketeers offered the ultimate device for staking his claim. Widely considered a triumph, these works manifest fully Picasso’s artistic range and zest for life. Such bravura is palpable in Buste d'homme à la pipe. As the artist said in a moment of frankness, ‘I have less and less time and I have more and more to say’ (quoted in ibid., p. 85).
Although Picasso had previously looked to history for inspiration, it wasn’t until 1966 that he turned his attention toward the figure of the musketeer. During a period of convalescence, he read classic works of literature including plays by Shakespeare and novels by Dickens, Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas. It was Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, which told the story of the rollicking adventures of Athos, Porthos, Aramis and their friend D'Artagnan, that so captivated Picasso. In the present work, the protagonist clutches a rectangular object to his chest, perhaps a book in a nod to this literary influence. The first oil painting of the series was completed in February 1967, with numerous canvases and works on paper following in its wake. Across these, the musketeers flirt and cavort; they are wry, dashing, impish, droll. Picasso felt such affection for his musketeers that he gave them attributes and personalities, and the writer Hélène Parmelin recalled how he would joke around with his paintings, pointing to one figure or another and saying, ‘With this one you’d better watch out. That one makes fun of us. That one is enormously satisfied. This one is a grave intellectual. And that one look how sad he is, the poor guy. He must be a painter’ (quoted in Picasso: Tradition and Avant Garde, exh. cat., Museo del Prado, Madrid, 2006, p. 340).
Picasso’s fascination with the musketeer appears to have been the logical next step in his ongoing dialogue with the art of the past. He had, during these years, begun to re-examine the painters he would have studied as a young artist, first at Madrid’s Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, and later at Barcelona’s School of Fine Arts. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Picasso took on the masterpieces of his predecessors, reinterpreting and reimagining iconic works such as Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas and Eugène Delacroix’s Les femmes d’Alger. As John Richardson aptly put it, ‘You identified with someone; you cannibalized them; you assumed their powers. How accurately this described what Picasso was up to in his last years’ (‘The Catch in the Late Picasso,’ The New York Review of Books, 19 July 1984, n.p.).
It was Rembrandt, however, whose influence can be most felt in the musketeers, and over the course of the 1960s, Picasso increasingly identified with the Dutch Golden Age painter. Both liked to wink at their audiences by inserting themselves into their paintings, and both had experienced great and lasting success. Picasso admired Rembrandt’s works on paper and frequently referenced Otto Benesch’s six-volume catalogue of Rembrandt’s drawings. Jacqueline Roque confirmed that it was Rembrandt who inspired the musketeer series, telling André Malraux that they ‘happened when Picasso started to study Rembrandt’ (quoted in M.-L. Bernadac, ‘Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model’, in Late Picasso, exh. cat., Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1988, p. 81).
By riffing on different artistic genres and images, Picasso announced his own position within the canon of art history. The musketeers offered the ultimate device for staking his claim. Widely considered a triumph, these works manifest fully Picasso’s artistic range and zest for life. Such bravura is palpable in Buste d'homme à la pipe. As the artist said in a moment of frankness, ‘I have less and less time and I have more and more to say’ (quoted in ibid., p. 85).