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Lot Essay
When he painted Paysage de Cormeilles-en-Parisis on 28 June 1933, Picasso was staying at his country hideaway, the Château de Boisgeloup, which he had bought three years earlier. This was to become the arena in which he would create some of his most celebrated masterpieces in oils, on paper, and in sculpture. This whirlwind of creativity had as its spur his lover of the period, Marie-Thérèse Walter. By the time that Paysage de Cormeilles-en-Parisis was painted, Picasso was increasingly estranged from his wife Olga, and was able to withdraw increasingly into a comfortable life with Marie-Thérèse in the countryside, some forty miles from Paris. He was no longer worried about concealing her from his wife, no longer keeping her in the château during the week and spiriting her away when his wife visited at weekends. This more settled existence resulted in a tension leaving his works, to be replaced by a flowing sensuality, even in his landscape paintings. The scene shown in this picture has a fairytale-like quality, the building appearing like a mysterious castle, peeking out of the romantic woodland. Picasso has deftly accentuated the verdure and the sense of romantic shelter of the building itself by painting it with fine strokes, with hatching for the walls and curlicues for the flowers, this light area in the centre of the picture appearing all the more sheltered and all the more magical as a result.
This is a flower-filled painting, and while Marie-Thérèse may not be visibly present in it, it is her influence that appears to have infused the picture with its romantic lyricism. In fact, the scene shown is not Boisgeloup, but a building much closer to Paris that featured in two other landscapes of the same period. However, Picasso created the work in his own haven of Boisgeloup, and it is Boisgeloup and Marie-Thérèse that have flavoured it; this is emphasised by the fact that, on the same day that Paysage de Cormeilles-en-Parisis was painted, Picasso created an oil of his lover sleeping, Femme endormie and Minotaure et nu (Le viol), a work on paper showing her naked and in the clutches of a minotaur, a projected image of the artist himself. This range of pictures, all executed on the same day, reveals the extent to which Picasso's muse inspired him, spurring him on to create some of the most poetic images of his entire career.
This is a flower-filled painting, and while Marie-Thérèse may not be visibly present in it, it is her influence that appears to have infused the picture with its romantic lyricism. In fact, the scene shown is not Boisgeloup, but a building much closer to Paris that featured in two other landscapes of the same period. However, Picasso created the work in his own haven of Boisgeloup, and it is Boisgeloup and Marie-Thérèse that have flavoured it; this is emphasised by the fact that, on the same day that Paysage de Cormeilles-en-Parisis was painted, Picasso created an oil of his lover sleeping, Femme endormie and Minotaure et nu (Le viol), a work on paper showing her naked and in the clutches of a minotaur, a projected image of the artist himself. This range of pictures, all executed on the same day, reveals the extent to which Picasso's muse inspired him, spurring him on to create some of the most poetic images of his entire career.