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Lot Essay
"Manet's concern was to relate a painting to a painting: Picasso's was to relate a painter to a painter. What was at stake was not only his own power as a painter but his power as a demiurge: the power to metamorphose certain objects in the world of reality which are also, and equally, paintings in a museum. Manet had freed him from the past and given him a new creative impulse. This was the last of Picasso's sets of variations: it was also the richest and most fruitful" (M.-L. Bernadac, "Picasso 1953-1972: Painting as Model", pp. 49-94, Late Picasso: Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Prints 1953-1972, exh. cat., London and Paris, 1988, p. 72).
It was with some prescience that Picasso, writing on the back of an envelope in 1932, declared: "When I see Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, I tell myself: grief for later" (Picasso, quoted in B. Léal, C. Piot and M.-L.Bernadac, The Ultimate Picasso, New York, 2003, p. 430). Throughout his career, Picasso weaved in the orbit of Edouard Manet, the hugely influential titan of nineteenth-century painting, and this came to an explosive fruition in the important series of variations upon the theme of his 1863 masterpiece Le déjeuner sur l'herbe that Picasso created between 1959 and 1961, almost a century after the original. Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, a color-filled ink and crayon picture created on panel in August of 1959, ranks among the very first of Picasso's explorations of this theme. During the following two years, he would carry on revisiting it, firstly at his home at the Château de Vauvenargues, where the greenery of the land has been said to have inspired this foray into the great outdoors in Picasso's art, and then also at the Villa La Californie and his final home at Mougins. With seemingly tireless energy and application, he would change the forms and even the narrative of the picture again and again.
During the 1950s in particular, Picasso created a number of series of "variations" based on the paintings of his predecessors: Las Meninas of his fellow Spaniard, Diego Velázquez, the Femmes d'Alger of Eugène Delacroix or, as here, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Manet. In these works, Picasso appeared to be challenging his artistic forefathers, squaring up to their legacies; at the same time, there was a certain gleeful irreverence in his dismantling and serial reconstruction of these iconic images for his own purposes. In the case of Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, the sense of iconoclasm is all the more pointed as the original work had itself been based on a predecessor, the Louvre's famous Concert champêtre previously attributed to Giorgione and now often ascribed to the hand of Titian. Manet's reimagining of this image of pastoral idyll was itself a cause of great scandal when it was first exhibited at the Salon des Refusés.
The earthy, raw sexuality of Manet's Déjeuner and of his Olympia, a secular reinvention of Titian's Venus of Urbino, doubtless appealed to Picasso. After all, he had already turned to the perfumed, exotic, Orientalist interior of Delacroix's harem-like scene in his Femmes d'Alger. In the case of the Déjeuner sur l'herbe, the presence of nudes outdoors in a modern context implied a realm of the senses that chimed with many of Picasso's own pictures, and indeed interests. At the time, Picasso was living with Jacqueline Roque, who would later become his wife: he was several decades older than her, and the presence of this striking young woman appears to have made a significant impact upon his pictures. In Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, Picasso has enthusiastically emphasized the curves of the bodies of the two female figures, especially the wide circles of their breasts, as they sit or bathe during this feast, underscoring the eroticism at play. Meanwhile, the nineteenth-century men manage to balance the probity so often associated with that age with a certain rakish style. Each has a long implement--one a pipe and the other a stick. They appear relaxed and at ease with this flesh-filled repast. Picasso had long shown a great interest in the theme of the nude, yet Le déjeuner sur l'herbe appears to relate in part to the theme of the artist and his model which would come to figure so often in his work.
In adapting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe to his own purposes, Picasso was playing with the history of art, with Manet's legacy and indeed with that of the Italian Renaissance. At the same time, he was retracing some of the steps of his own history: after all, he had first seen Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe over half a century earlier, during his historic first trip to Paris. This was a picture that would intersect with Picasso several times during his life. For instance, almost three decades before he wrote about the picture on the back of an envelope, he had created a portrait of the Soler family which was clearly indebted to Manet's picture, which he had seen a few years earlier (see J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso: 1881-1906, London, 1991, pp. 172, 285 and 421). And half a decade before Picasso himself turned to his own variations on the theme of the Déjeuner sur l'herbe, he had already been exploring it in drawings based on that masterpiece which were in his sketchbooks from 1954.
Manet's influence upon Picasso extended beyond Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. It has been suggested that, after he attended the famous 1905 Salon d'Automne which featured the Fauves and also crucially a retrospective dedicated to Manet, Picasso changed the composition of his Famille de saltimbanques so that it resembled the older artist's Le vieux musicien, painted in 1862 and now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. This was again an instance of the kind of leapfrog that would become increasingly prevalent in Picasso's career: Manet is believed to have been influenced by Spanish painting when he created Le vieux musicien. In 1910-1911, Picasso had two pictures shown alongside those of Manet in an exhibition held at the Grafton Galleries in London entitled Manet and the Post-Impressionists. During the following decades, Picasso created a number of pictures taking Manet as his example. He was a crucial touchstone for Picasso, as is reflected by Hélène Parmelin's recollection of a trip to the museum in Nice that the Spanish artist's household made on the occasion of Manet's Lola de Valence being exhibited there (see H. Parmelin, Picasso Plain, trans. H. Hare, London, 1963, pp. 120-121).
Picasso's visual memory meant that the works of older artists, and indeed those of his own contemporaries, threaded through his entire career. He was often in a dialogue with other artists, from the Iberian primitive sculptors, to the School of Fontainebleau, Jean-Auguste- Dominique Ingres or indeed Manet. These dialogues, though, reached a new frenzied pace during the course of 1954, the year that Picasso began his variations on the Femmes d'Alger by Delacroix. It was also late in 1954 that Picasso's friend, rival and fellow artist Henri Matisse died. The timing may not be coincidence: Picasso and Matisse had felt isolated, as though they were the only artists able to understand one another. In 1954, Picasso had already turned to Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe and would interact with other artistic predecessors such as Velasquez in the coming years. This may have been in part in lieu of the dialogues that, during the late 1940s and the first half of the 1950s, he had so enjoyed with Matisse, sometimes with Françoise Gilot in tow. Against a backdrop of Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel, Picasso may have felt happier resolving his artistic inquiries with the late great painters of the past.
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe was dedicated by Picasso to his friend, the jazz impresario Norman Granz, a decade after it was created. Granz accumulated an impressive collection during his lifetime including a number of works by Picasso. Granz was an American jazz music producer and human rights activist who organized the concert at the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles in July 1944 under the heading "Jazz at the Philharmonic." He recorded and toured with an incredible string of jazz legends including the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker and Lester Young.
(fig. 1) Edouard Manet, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Barcode: 2885 3060
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Study after Manet's "Déjeuner sur l'herbe" Carnet 50, folio 5 recto, 26-29 June 1954.
Barcode:
It was with some prescience that Picasso, writing on the back of an envelope in 1932, declared: "When I see Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, I tell myself: grief for later" (Picasso, quoted in B. Léal, C. Piot and M.-L.Bernadac, The Ultimate Picasso, New York, 2003, p. 430). Throughout his career, Picasso weaved in the orbit of Edouard Manet, the hugely influential titan of nineteenth-century painting, and this came to an explosive fruition in the important series of variations upon the theme of his 1863 masterpiece Le déjeuner sur l'herbe that Picasso created between 1959 and 1961, almost a century after the original. Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, a color-filled ink and crayon picture created on panel in August of 1959, ranks among the very first of Picasso's explorations of this theme. During the following two years, he would carry on revisiting it, firstly at his home at the Château de Vauvenargues, where the greenery of the land has been said to have inspired this foray into the great outdoors in Picasso's art, and then also at the Villa La Californie and his final home at Mougins. With seemingly tireless energy and application, he would change the forms and even the narrative of the picture again and again.
During the 1950s in particular, Picasso created a number of series of "variations" based on the paintings of his predecessors: Las Meninas of his fellow Spaniard, Diego Velázquez, the Femmes d'Alger of Eugène Delacroix or, as here, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe by Manet. In these works, Picasso appeared to be challenging his artistic forefathers, squaring up to their legacies; at the same time, there was a certain gleeful irreverence in his dismantling and serial reconstruction of these iconic images for his own purposes. In the case of Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, the sense of iconoclasm is all the more pointed as the original work had itself been based on a predecessor, the Louvre's famous Concert champêtre previously attributed to Giorgione and now often ascribed to the hand of Titian. Manet's reimagining of this image of pastoral idyll was itself a cause of great scandal when it was first exhibited at the Salon des Refusés.
The earthy, raw sexuality of Manet's Déjeuner and of his Olympia, a secular reinvention of Titian's Venus of Urbino, doubtless appealed to Picasso. After all, he had already turned to the perfumed, exotic, Orientalist interior of Delacroix's harem-like scene in his Femmes d'Alger. In the case of the Déjeuner sur l'herbe, the presence of nudes outdoors in a modern context implied a realm of the senses that chimed with many of Picasso's own pictures, and indeed interests. At the time, Picasso was living with Jacqueline Roque, who would later become his wife: he was several decades older than her, and the presence of this striking young woman appears to have made a significant impact upon his pictures. In Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, Picasso has enthusiastically emphasized the curves of the bodies of the two female figures, especially the wide circles of their breasts, as they sit or bathe during this feast, underscoring the eroticism at play. Meanwhile, the nineteenth-century men manage to balance the probity so often associated with that age with a certain rakish style. Each has a long implement--one a pipe and the other a stick. They appear relaxed and at ease with this flesh-filled repast. Picasso had long shown a great interest in the theme of the nude, yet Le déjeuner sur l'herbe appears to relate in part to the theme of the artist and his model which would come to figure so often in his work.
In adapting Le déjeuner sur l'herbe to his own purposes, Picasso was playing with the history of art, with Manet's legacy and indeed with that of the Italian Renaissance. At the same time, he was retracing some of the steps of his own history: after all, he had first seen Manet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe over half a century earlier, during his historic first trip to Paris. This was a picture that would intersect with Picasso several times during his life. For instance, almost three decades before he wrote about the picture on the back of an envelope, he had created a portrait of the Soler family which was clearly indebted to Manet's picture, which he had seen a few years earlier (see J. Richardson, A Life of Picasso: 1881-1906, London, 1991, pp. 172, 285 and 421). And half a decade before Picasso himself turned to his own variations on the theme of the Déjeuner sur l'herbe, he had already been exploring it in drawings based on that masterpiece which were in his sketchbooks from 1954.
Manet's influence upon Picasso extended beyond Le déjeuner sur l'herbe. It has been suggested that, after he attended the famous 1905 Salon d'Automne which featured the Fauves and also crucially a retrospective dedicated to Manet, Picasso changed the composition of his Famille de saltimbanques so that it resembled the older artist's Le vieux musicien, painted in 1862 and now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. This was again an instance of the kind of leapfrog that would become increasingly prevalent in Picasso's career: Manet is believed to have been influenced by Spanish painting when he created Le vieux musicien. In 1910-1911, Picasso had two pictures shown alongside those of Manet in an exhibition held at the Grafton Galleries in London entitled Manet and the Post-Impressionists. During the following decades, Picasso created a number of pictures taking Manet as his example. He was a crucial touchstone for Picasso, as is reflected by Hélène Parmelin's recollection of a trip to the museum in Nice that the Spanish artist's household made on the occasion of Manet's Lola de Valence being exhibited there (see H. Parmelin, Picasso Plain, trans. H. Hare, London, 1963, pp. 120-121).
Picasso's visual memory meant that the works of older artists, and indeed those of his own contemporaries, threaded through his entire career. He was often in a dialogue with other artists, from the Iberian primitive sculptors, to the School of Fontainebleau, Jean-Auguste- Dominique Ingres or indeed Manet. These dialogues, though, reached a new frenzied pace during the course of 1954, the year that Picasso began his variations on the Femmes d'Alger by Delacroix. It was also late in 1954 that Picasso's friend, rival and fellow artist Henri Matisse died. The timing may not be coincidence: Picasso and Matisse had felt isolated, as though they were the only artists able to understand one another. In 1954, Picasso had already turned to Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe and would interact with other artistic predecessors such as Velasquez in the coming years. This may have been in part in lieu of the dialogues that, during the late 1940s and the first half of the 1950s, he had so enjoyed with Matisse, sometimes with Françoise Gilot in tow. Against a backdrop of Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel, Picasso may have felt happier resolving his artistic inquiries with the late great painters of the past.
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe was dedicated by Picasso to his friend, the jazz impresario Norman Granz, a decade after it was created. Granz accumulated an impressive collection during his lifetime including a number of works by Picasso. Granz was an American jazz music producer and human rights activist who organized the concert at the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles in July 1944 under the heading "Jazz at the Philharmonic." He recorded and toured with an incredible string of jazz legends including the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker and Lester Young.
(fig. 1) Edouard Manet, Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, 1863. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Barcode: 2885 3060
(fig. 2) Pablo Picasso, Study after Manet's "Déjeuner sur l'herbe" Carnet 50, folio 5 recto, 26-29 June 1954.
Barcode: