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拍品专文
Raised in the mild, Mediterranean climate of Andalusia, Picasso disliked the winter cold in Paris, and, not surprisingly, he often turned to summery subjects during the short, dark and icy days at the end of the year. He made the present drawing of Dora Maar, in which he depicted his mistress as a bathing beauty, lounging on the beach with the sun glinting on the sea behind her, on the day after Christmas, 1938. The artist has recalled in this scene the seaside holiday that he and Dora had spent during the previous summer at the Hôtel Vaste Horizon in Mougins, near Cannes. It was there, two years earlier, when Picasso asked Dora, with whom he was then only acquainted and who happened to be staying nearby, to take a walk together along the beach, during which he unburdened himself of the many complications in his life concerning his wife Olga, his young mistress Marie-Thérèse and their child Maya. They became friendly, and Dora was soon his new love interest. They returned to Mougins together as lovers the following year. The summer of 1938 was their third and last vacation in Mougins prior to the war.
There was another reason that probably caused Picasso to indulge in this pleasant seaside fantasy. In mid-December he suffered a debilitating attack of sciatica, which kept him bedridden through Christmas week. Accustomed to working daily in his studio, he was suddenly unable to paint, became extremely restless and suffered from insomnia. A doctor finally took the drastic step of cauterizing a nerve, which instantly and miraculously ended this painful condition.
There are, consequently, no published paintings done after 11 December and before New Year's Eve, 1938. On 10 December Picasso painted the large and magnificent canvas Femme assise au jardin (Zervos, vol. 9, no. 232), which is, like the present drawing, a recollection of Dora in a summertime setting. Christmas Eve he sketched beach scenes on both sides of a small flattened box (Musée Picasso, Paris). On Christmas Day and on the 26th, he made several sketches of his friend Jaime Sabartés dressed as a courtier and a monk. None of these, however, prepare the viewer for the present drawing, so completely and finely rendered, surely the best that Picasso had done in almost two months.
Visible here is Picasso's characteristic Dora visage, with her nose angled to one side, as if seen in profile, while her eyes and mouth are arranged in a frontal view. As in many of the finest drawings that Picasso executed during the late 1930s, the artist has employed extensive hatching. This technique enabled him to enhance and spatialize the essential flatness of line drawing, by reinforcing the planar elements in Dora's face and figure, and the towel on which she reclines. This is a continuation of the practice seen in the aforementioned painting Femme assise au jardin. Christine Piot has observed that "From April to December 1938, the painted and sketched motifs come closer together, usually in complex hatching. A tangle of parallel lines that create boxed and stripes spaces resemble spiderwebs that imprison the subject like a fly; shapes coil inward, like basketry that does not let air pass through" (in The Ultimate Picasso, New York, 2000, p. 329). A novel effect seen here, and probably not repeated anywhere else in Picasso's oeuvre, is the looping hatchwork used to depict the rippling wave motion of the water, which creates a fascinatingly intricate background pattern, like the woven straw in a basket.
There was another reason that probably caused Picasso to indulge in this pleasant seaside fantasy. In mid-December he suffered a debilitating attack of sciatica, which kept him bedridden through Christmas week. Accustomed to working daily in his studio, he was suddenly unable to paint, became extremely restless and suffered from insomnia. A doctor finally took the drastic step of cauterizing a nerve, which instantly and miraculously ended this painful condition.
There are, consequently, no published paintings done after 11 December and before New Year's Eve, 1938. On 10 December Picasso painted the large and magnificent canvas Femme assise au jardin (Zervos, vol. 9, no. 232), which is, like the present drawing, a recollection of Dora in a summertime setting. Christmas Eve he sketched beach scenes on both sides of a small flattened box (Musée Picasso, Paris). On Christmas Day and on the 26th, he made several sketches of his friend Jaime Sabartés dressed as a courtier and a monk. None of these, however, prepare the viewer for the present drawing, so completely and finely rendered, surely the best that Picasso had done in almost two months.
Visible here is Picasso's characteristic Dora visage, with her nose angled to one side, as if seen in profile, while her eyes and mouth are arranged in a frontal view. As in many of the finest drawings that Picasso executed during the late 1930s, the artist has employed extensive hatching. This technique enabled him to enhance and spatialize the essential flatness of line drawing, by reinforcing the planar elements in Dora's face and figure, and the towel on which she reclines. This is a continuation of the practice seen in the aforementioned painting Femme assise au jardin. Christine Piot has observed that "From April to December 1938, the painted and sketched motifs come closer together, usually in complex hatching. A tangle of parallel lines that create boxed and stripes spaces resemble spiderwebs that imprison the subject like a fly; shapes coil inward, like basketry that does not let air pass through" (in The Ultimate Picasso, New York, 2000, p. 329). A novel effect seen here, and probably not repeated anywhere else in Picasso's oeuvre, is the looping hatchwork used to depict the rippling wave motion of the water, which creates a fascinatingly intricate background pattern, like the woven straw in a basket.