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Lot Essay
Vieillard debout, les bras croisés is closely related to La Tragédie, a major Blue Period canvas that Picasso painted in Barcelona in 1903, depicting a man, woman, and young boy huddled at the edge of the ocean (Zervos, vol. 1, no. 208; fig. 1). La Tragédie is the definitive statement of a theme that Picasso had begun to explore in Barcelona the previous year, that of les misérables on the seashore (Z., vol. 1, nos. 197 and 381; vol. 6, no. 478; Daix, nos. VII.19 and IX.4). In 1902, he painted destitute mothers and their children, wandering sadly and silently on the beach; the following year, he added a male figure to the grouping. John Richardson has written about this series, "The bluer Picasso's paintings become, the more they are permeated by the sea. Picasso had grown up in a succession of seaports, and when he lived in Barcelona he liked to prowl the beach of Barceloneta, behind the harbor, where the homeless subjects of his work were to be found. Picasso had a way of using the sea to amplify the mood of a subject: in these early years to enhance the melancholy; later, to very different ends. For Picasso of the Blue Period, beaches had the advantage of no specific associations; they were outside time and place--a blue limbo" (A Life of Picasso, New York, 1996, vol. I, p. 238).
The figure in the present drawing has the same scraggly hair and beard, furrowed brow, and hooded eyes as the father in La Tragédie. He stands in an analogous pose: chin lowered, shoulders hunched, and arms tightly crossed, with the body turned slightly toward the viewer's left and the weight on the proper right leg. Even his costume--a long-sleeved tunic that falls to mid-thigh, with pants beneath--is comparable. Instead of standing on the beach, however, the man in Vieillard debout is positioned in a dimly lit location beside an arched opening, probably the entrance to a tunnel or culvert, or the underside of a bridge, through which a sketchily rendered tree can be seen.
The ultimate source for these images of wretchedness and alienation is Puvis de Chavannes's iconic painting of 1881, Le pauvre pêcheur (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), which depicts a gaunt fisherman in a boat, his head bowed and his arms crossed in a posture of melancholy and constraint. Picasso would have had ample opportunity to study this painting in the Louvre, where it had hung since 1887, and may also have known it from a lithograph published by Vollard in 1897. A bearded old man with an anguished expression also appears in the foreground of Puvis's Famille du pêcheur (The Art Institute of Chicago), which Picasso would have seen at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, during his first trip to the French capital. Picasso had been introduced to the work of Puvis in the late 1890s by the Catalan painter Santiago Rusiñol, who described Puvis as "the most universal genius of the art of our time" (quoted in R. Wattenmaker, Puvis de Chavannes and the Modern Tradition, exh. cat., Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1975, p. 168). The influence of Puvis's work is palpable in Picasso's work from the Blue Period; in 1902, Max Jacob described seeing the artist's bed "covered with drawings recalling those of Puvis de Chavannes" (quoted in S. Lemoine, Toward Modern Art: From Puvis de Chavannes to Matisse and Picasso, exh. cat., Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2002, p. 148). Richardson has declared, "Puvis's amalgam of neo-classicism and romanticism, which had had such an influence on Gauguin's work a few years earlier, would henceforth be a major ingredient of the Blue Period style" (op. cit., p. 257).
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, La Tragédie, 1903. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
The figure in the present drawing has the same scraggly hair and beard, furrowed brow, and hooded eyes as the father in La Tragédie. He stands in an analogous pose: chin lowered, shoulders hunched, and arms tightly crossed, with the body turned slightly toward the viewer's left and the weight on the proper right leg. Even his costume--a long-sleeved tunic that falls to mid-thigh, with pants beneath--is comparable. Instead of standing on the beach, however, the man in Vieillard debout is positioned in a dimly lit location beside an arched opening, probably the entrance to a tunnel or culvert, or the underside of a bridge, through which a sketchily rendered tree can be seen.
The ultimate source for these images of wretchedness and alienation is Puvis de Chavannes's iconic painting of 1881, Le pauvre pêcheur (Musée d'Orsay, Paris), which depicts a gaunt fisherman in a boat, his head bowed and his arms crossed in a posture of melancholy and constraint. Picasso would have had ample opportunity to study this painting in the Louvre, where it had hung since 1887, and may also have known it from a lithograph published by Vollard in 1897. A bearded old man with an anguished expression also appears in the foreground of Puvis's Famille du pêcheur (The Art Institute of Chicago), which Picasso would have seen at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, during his first trip to the French capital. Picasso had been introduced to the work of Puvis in the late 1890s by the Catalan painter Santiago Rusiñol, who described Puvis as "the most universal genius of the art of our time" (quoted in R. Wattenmaker, Puvis de Chavannes and the Modern Tradition, exh. cat., Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 1975, p. 168). The influence of Puvis's work is palpable in Picasso's work from the Blue Period; in 1902, Max Jacob described seeing the artist's bed "covered with drawings recalling those of Puvis de Chavannes" (quoted in S. Lemoine, Toward Modern Art: From Puvis de Chavannes to Matisse and Picasso, exh. cat., Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 2002, p. 148). Richardson has declared, "Puvis's amalgam of neo-classicism and romanticism, which had had such an influence on Gauguin's work a few years earlier, would henceforth be a major ingredient of the Blue Period style" (op. cit., p. 257).
(fig. 1) Pablo Picasso, La Tragédie, 1903. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.